


Meant to Be

by TheDragon



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Hostage Situations, Kidnapping, M/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-08
Updated: 2017-10-10
Packaged: 2019-01-10 19:45:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 25,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12306408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheDragon/pseuds/TheDragon
Summary: Arthur's hands are shaking -- it’s something he notices only once he finally gives himself a moment to breathe, to fully comprehend what is happening.There's a man locked in the basement. Inhis father'sbasement.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I've actually managed to finish my ACBB project, which is something I thought might not happen this year. Thank you to **LFB72** , who came up with the prompt during last year's merlin-holidays, and thank you so much to my artist, **cedesdraws**. Once again, I apologise for going radio silent for so long. In any case, I loved working with you  <3
> 
> The second part of this will be up in a few hours ~~because I can't keep my eyes open enough to go through the last of the edits~~.
> 
>  **Warnings** can be found in the notes at the end.

Arthur is frozen. His limbs are locked in place, and his eyes won’t close, and he can feel cold sweat running down the back of his neck and soaking into the collar of his shirt.

A quiet whimper startles him into taking half a step back. After that, it’s easy to force his body into motion, to spread his hands disarmingly and make the surprised and not-so-slightly terrified expression on his face twist into something more calm, more soothing.

“Hello,” he whispers into the quiet and instantly wants to hit himself on the head for how stupid that sounds.

He takes a small step forward, immediately regretting it when it draws another whimper and flinch from the boy in front of him. Arthur freezes again, having absolutely no idea what to do. A small, distant part of him is telling him that he should probably call the police, but it’s overrun by the need to help this boy. Boy… man? He’s covered in so much grime and blood that Arthur can’t tell what colour his clothes used to be, let alone his age.

Arthur knows his father kept secrets, but he never expected them to have pale skin and black hair and be chained up in the basement.

He goes down on his knees, trying to make himself seem smaller and less intimidating. It doesn’t seem to work -- the man just draws further away from him and into the wall, looking as if he wants to disappear into it. His bright blue eyes are wide, and he’s keeping his gaze locked on Arthur’s collarbones rather than on his face.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” Arthur promises, voice still no louder than a whisper. “I want to...” he trails off. What does he want. To help? Yes, he wants to help. He just needs to convince this man to let him. “Let’s get those chains off,” he states. He stands up slowly and backs away, shining the torch at where the shackles are around the man’s wrists and ankles.

They’re caked in blood, and Arthur can see the angry red streaks where they rubbed the man’s skin raw. While they might have once been ideally fitted, they now hang off him, but not enough for him to be able to slip out.

Bolt cutters. He needs to get bolt cutters

“I’ll just…” Arthur begins, but trails off when he realises that he has no idea what to say next. He swallows loudly. “I’ll be right back. To take those off,” he says. He makes to stand up, drawing another whimper from the man. Arthur pretends not to notice it. “Do you want me to leave the torch here?” he asks after a moment of hesitation.

As expected, he gets no answer, but he bends down to put the torch on the floor regardless.

“I’ll be right back,” he repeats. He takes a few slow steps backwards, then turns to run down the corridor and back upstairs.

Bolt cutters.

Where did he leave them?

The last he saw of them, he thinks, they were in the garage. It’s where he goes now, his feet pounding on the mahogany floors as he races through the house. He almost rips the door to the garage off its hinges in his haste to get to the bolt cutters.

Arthur goes through every cupboard, every toolbox he can see, and then berates himself for being unobservant when he finds them lying on top of a table.

His hands are shaking -- it’s something he notices only once he finally gives himself a moment to breathe, to fully comprehend what is happening.

There's a man locked in the basement -- in _his father's_ basement.

He can't imagine what would have happened if he'd put off cleaning the place for another day. To think that he would have gone down there one day, only to find a body... the thought of it makes him feel sick.

Arthur makes a grab for the bolt cutters, and runs back to the house. An unopened bottle of water catches his eye as he runs through the kitchen, and he decides that it would probably be a good idea to take it with him. Who knows just how dehydrated the man downstairs is? Uther has been gone for two days, and Arthur seriously doubted that he’d left the man any provisions.

Just the thought of his father leaving someone to die makes him feel nauseous, and he takes a second to stop, to lean against the door and wait for the churning in his stomach to come to a halt.

He's downstairs again within a moment's notice, making his way through the corridor and back into the makeshift cell. The man is exactly where Arthur left him, and his heart breaks in his chest all over again at the sight of him.

"I'm back; it's just me," Arthur whispers when he sees the man draw away again. "I have something for you," he adds, and the boy flinches. Arthur doesn’t want to think about what kind of unwanted memories the words could have brought up. "But I need to get these chains off first. Can I... is it alright if I touch your hands?"

He waits until the man, still looking very much like he wants the ground to swallow him up, nods hesitantly, before kneeling down and reaching out to grasp his hand. It's frail and bony, and for a  second, Arthur is scared that the smallest touch might hurt him.

He puts the hand on his lap, and settles the chains in between the jaws of the bolt cutters. They break apart with a loud snap, and the second they do, the hand is being pulled away from him. The man is looking from it to Arthur in barely-concealed awe, and Arthur feels sick.

"What's your name?" he asks, moving to grasp the man's other hand. He's not particularly surprised when he doesn't get a reply. He wonders how long it's been since the man has had anyone to talk to.

When the second hand is finally free, Arthur reaches out to open the bottle of water he'd brought with him.

"Drink," he urges, holding it out. The man reaches for it hesitantly, looking as though he's scared that this is all just a sick joke, and that the water will be taken away from him at any moment. Once the bottle is in his hands, however, he's gulping down the water so fast that Arthur worries he's going to choke.

"Let me just free your legs," Arthur whispers into the silence, one all of the water is gone. Some of it trailed from the corner of the man’s mouth, rinsing away some of the filth that had gathered on his face.

The chains at his feet are stronger than the ones that had bound the man's hands, and for a second, Arthur worries that he's not strong enough to cut through them. Thankfully, it turns out that all of his working out hasn't been for nothing, and they, too, eventually break apart with a loud snap.

Arthur kneels there, unsure of what to do. The man is still looking at him a bit warily, and he's hugging the empty bottle of water to his chest so hard that it crackles.

"What's your name?" Arthur tries again. "I'm Arthur."

"...Merlin," comes the reply.

"Is it alright if I help you up, Merlin?" Arthur asks. Merlin looks at him, unsure, and Arthur forces a small smile to his face in an effort to seem less intimidating.

He’d taken classes, hadn’t he? Back when he’d still thought he could live out his dream of becoming a police officer; before his father had forced him to go into business, had threatened to cut off all ties with him.

He needs to remain calm; he remembers that much. Stay calm, get help.

"All right," Merlin says eventually, reaching out to Arthur with the hand that’s not holding the bottle. Arthur grasps it carefully before moving to wrap his other arm around Merlin's shoulders. He wants to draw back when Merlin flinches away from him again, but he knows that the most important thing right now is getting Merlin out of here. That, and calling the actual police. And an ambulance, too. Merlin is severely malnourished and bruised all over, but Arthur hopes to all the gods that that is the extent of his injuries.

"Come on. Let's go upstairs," he says, helping Merlin up. He's forced to tighten his grip when Merlin stumbles, fearing that Merlin might trip over his own two feet and fall. Together, they try to take a few steps, but it's clear that Merlin's legs are unwilling to cooperate with him, so Arthur ends up moving one of Merlin's arms around his own shoulders in order to keep him up. "It's not far. Just a few more steps. Do you want me to carry you?"

Merlin shakes his head, shoulders hunched.

"I'll be fine," he whispers, voice croaky and brittle. "I just-- I haven't walked in months." And Arthur falls silent, not knowing what to say to that.

They make it upstairs eventually, after a scare that involves Merlin tilting back dangerously far on the top stair. Arthur sits Merlin down on the couch and stands off to the side, unsure what else to do. When Merlin shivers in his threadbare clothing, he gives him a blanket and watches as Merlin cocoons himself in it.

"I'll be just a minute," Arthur says, turning around to walk away. He starts when cold, clammy fingers wrap around his wrist, and he turns back to look at Merlin.

"Don't go," Merlin whimpers, eyes wide and terrified and pleading. "Please don't leave me here." His other hand is crushing to empty water bottle so tightly that it starts to crinkle. If Merlin had any more strength, it would probably have been crushed long ago.

"I need to call the police," Arthur replies, torn. "My phone is in the other room," he says, but Merlin's looking at him, eyes so desperate that Arthur can't bring himself to tear his hand away.

"Please," Merlin just repeats. " _Please_."

Arthur sighs, but walks back to the couch to kneel down in front of Merlin.

"How about you come with me to get the phone?" he asks. "We can get you something to eat, too. How does that sound?" Arthur asks.

He waits until Merlin nods hesitantly before helping him up again, grateful that Merlin doesn't seem to be flinching away from the close contact quite so much anymore.

They make it to the kitchen quickly, especially when compared to the large amount of time it took them to get up the stairs previously. Arthur helps Merlin settle down in one of the stools by the kitchen island. He watches Merlin as he goes to get a pear from the fruit bowl and his phone, half-afraid that Merlin is going to fall off the stool, and half-afraid that he's going to try to run away before Arthur can contact the right authorities.

He knows he's putting this off for too long, that he should probably have called the police a long time ago, but it seems that his brain won't allow his body to do anything until he has helped Merlin as much as he is able to, until he's absolutely sure that he’s done all that he can to make sure that Merlin is completely safe and sound.

He grabs a knife and a cutting board on his way back to the kitchen island, doubting that Merlin will be able to handle biting into the fruit just yet. He distantly recalls being told that victims of starvation should eat light foods, but he has no broth anywhere in the house and he refuses to watch Merlin go hungry for any longer than he has to. Besides, a pear should be fine, right?

With that thought in mind, Arthur puts down the items he's holding. His hands are shaking again, he notices, but he puts that thought out of his mind nearly instantly. There are other, more important things he has to think of right now.

He slices up the pear quickly. Then shoves the cutting board, sans knife, in Merlin's direction.

Merlin's own hands are filthy and he probably should have washed them, but personal hygiene is something he guesses neither of them have thought of in a while.

It's only one Merlin finally swallows down his first bite of the pear that Arthur finally picks up his phone and does the one thing he should have done long ago.

_"999, what's your emergency?"_

~oOo~

The police and the ambulance arrive at his house in record time. At least, they arrive faster than they did a few months ago, back when Morgana had a car accident (nothing serious; she’d ended up with a few scratches on her arms courtesy of all the broken glass and a mild concussion).

The second the paramedics come, they try to urge Merlin into the ambulance, but Merlin refuses to go without Arthur. Arthur can understand the sentiment; he doesn’t think he’ll be able to leave Merlin anytime soon, either. Arthur, followed by a handful of officers, carefully helps Merlin up  since he's unwilling to let anyone else close to him.

He watches as they draw blood, check blood pressure, connect an IV drip, and just overall flutter around Merlin while Arthur stands to the side, giving his statement to the police.

The following hours are some of the longest in Arthur's life. Within a few minutes, his father's house becomes a crime scene he is ordered to stay away from until the forensics team is able to go through it, and Merlin, a man he met so little time ago, seems to become the most important thing in his life, and _why is that_ , when Arthur still doesn't know anything about him other than his name?

Once the police leave him alone, he's asked to accompany Merlin to the hospital in the ambulance. He says _asked_ but there isn't really much choice in the matter since Merlin refuses to let Arthur out of his sight, and the paramedics are hesitant to sedate him.

So Arthur goes. He rides in the ambulance, sitting right at Merlin's side, and never once taking his eyes off him. He's cleaned up somewhat. Seeing as he still avoids touch, he'd been given a wet washcloth and allowed to wipe the grime from his hands and face. Arthur's not sure whether this makes Merlin look better or worse, because now the bruises marring his skin are even more vivid against his pale complexion.

The thought that his father was the one who put them there makes his stomach twist unpleasantly.

By the time they finally get to the hospital, he's managed to convince both Merlin and himself to let the doctors take care of him, as well as promise that he won’t leave until Merlin wants him to.

Once Merlin is taken away, Arthur’s left alone in the hospital, staring at the people walking around him and wondering what to do. He doesn't know how long he stands there before one of the nurses takes notice of him, but when he next comes to, he's been sat down in a chair and someone is telling him to put his head between his knees.

“Sir? Sir! Has anyone checked to see if you’re in shock?” the nurse asks. Arthur blinks a few times as the words manage to permeate the fog his mind is encased in, then shakes his head. A minute or two later, he’s wrapped up in a bright red blanket.

Someone calls Morgana. He thinks that he's the one who tells them to do it, but he's not entirely sure. He just sits there and tries to get his breathing under control and waits until she arrives; feeling as though only the thought of seeing his sister is the only thing keeping him from breaking apart into little, tiny pieces, right then and there in the hospital corridor.

Morgana doesn't take long to arrive. He knows she works at least a half-hour's drive away and spares but a moment to disapprove of how many traffic laws she must have broken to get here.

"Arthur?" she asks, sitting down beside him, clearly worried. No wonder, he thinks, seeing as she's just been called and told that her brother is in the hospital. She's still holding herself together much better than he would have in her place. Than he kind of _did_ in her place. Morgana reaches out to him, and Arthur practically throws himself into her embrace.

"He's sick," Arthur says. "Sick."

"What are you on about?" Morgana asks, but she doesn't move away; instead, she starts stroking her fingers through his hair like she used to do when they were younger, whenever Arthur came running into her room after yet another nightmare.

"Father. He. He kept him down in the basement. For months," Arthur chokes out, and the tears finally start flowing from his eyes. He starts shivering again.

"Shhh. It's alright," Morgana soothes him, even though she must have no clue as to what's going on. Arthur allows himself to be comforted as he's never let Morgana do before and just makes the most of the first few moments of quiet he's had since he discovered Merlin chained up in the basement.

"And I don't even know why this is hitting me so hard," he adds, lifting his head from her shoulder to look at her. Morgana just looks back at him, lost and confused, and Arthur takes a deep breath and prepares to tell her what exactly had happened.

He never expected it to feel this good to hear his father being called a monster outside the confines of his own head.

~oOo~

It's only a few more hours before he's allowed to see Merlin again, but it seems like forever. He gets lost twice on the way to Merlin's room because he can't seem to remember the instructions properly, and it's only once Morgana takes control of the situation that they end up turning down the proper corridor.

"I'll wait out here," she says, and Arthur gives her a thankful nod. He puts his hand on the handle of the door and just stands there for a moment, unsure of whether he wants to go in, but Merlin said that he wanted to see him, and for some unbeknownst to him reason, Arthur wants to see him as well. He wants to know that Merlin is fine, that he's _going to be_ fine.

Morgana gives him a little push and he finally opens the door to Merlin's room and walks in.

Merlin's lying on the bed, and he's covered from head to toe in bandages and various shiny ointments, but he's been cleaned up, and once Arthur gets past all the medical paraphernalia, Merlin looks so much better than he did all those hours ago.

"Hi," Arthur says, feeling incredibly self-conscious when Merlin's eyes finally land on him. Not on his own eyes, though, no. Merlin's gaze once again refuses to travel any higher than Arthur's collarbones. Arthur has a sinking feeling that it will take a while before Merlin willingly makes eye contact with anyone.

"Hi," Merlin says back to him. His fingers twitch in Arthur's direction, but other than that, he abstains from any movement.

Arthur grabs a nearby chair and moves it closer to the bed. He sinks down in it, huffing in annoyance when his blanket gets stuck underneath him. He straightens it out, if only to have something to do with his hands.

"I'd ask how you're doing, but..." Arthur trails off, sweeping his hand down the length of Merlin's body. He immediately regrets the action when it causes Merlin to flinch away from him. "Sorry."

"It's fine," Merlin replies, eyes downcast. "I just... can't seem to help how I react to some things." His voice is so small and broken that Arthur finds himself wanting to just take Merlin into his arms to comfort him and worst of all he still has no idea where these thoughts are coming from.

“It’ll pass”, Arthur says, hoping to cheer Merlin up. It doesn’t work, though, because now Merlin’ worrying at his bottom lip.

“What if it doesn’t?” he asks, eyes flitting up to Arthur’s for a split second. “What if it never goes away, what he-- what if I don’t get better?”

Arthur doesn’t quite know what to say to that.

~oOo~

It's late into the evening by the time Arthur and Morgana finally get back to Uther's house. The police are no longer there. One of the officers working the case had called an hour back and told Arthur that they were done processing the crime scene and that if he wanted to, he was welcome to spend the night at home.

But it’s not his home. Uther’s, maybe, but the only place that Arthur would ever be willing to call home is the flat he bought for himself on the other side of London, the location chosen purposely to be as far away from here as possible.

The first thing he and Morgana do is make themselves a cup of coffee each. Morgana also tries to put together a few sandwiches, but fails spectacularly. She never was any good at preparing food. Still, they're both hungry and exhausted enough after the day's events that neither of them care much about what it is exactly that they are eating.

"I can't believe it," Morgana whispers into the silence that seems to encompass the entire house."I always knew he was a cruel man, but why would he do such a thing?"

Arthur shakes his head and takes another sip of his coffee. He doesn't want to talk about this anymore. A part of him, quite a large part that sounds a bit like his father, is telling him that he shouldn't be allowing himself to be this affected -- after all, it's not like anything had actually happened to _him_ , just to some man he’d never met before.

Arthur tries to drown that part out.

"Will you help me clean up?" Arthur asks. He doesn't want to talk about what happened anymore, he just wants to get rid of any and all evidence of it. He wants the house to be immaculate, and most of all, he wants the basement to _not exist_.

It’s not his house. He hasn’t lived here in ages, and he has no responsibility to care for it, but he can’t stand the thought of leaving it in the state it’s in.

"Shouldn't we call in some specialists?" Morgana asks tentatively, tilting her head to the side. She's worried about him, he can tell. He can’t say he’s surprised.

Arthur shakes his head.

"I need something to do. I can't just sit here and do nothing when that--" he chokes out, then grits his teeth so hard that he swears he hears them creak. Morgana just looks at him sadly and somewhat bemusedly, but quickly assents.

It takes them hours to get the bloodstains out of the floors. Arthur still feels as though they’re there, no matter how much Morgana assures him that no, they’re not, and even if they were, the it would be impossible to see them with such bad lighting.

Morgana leaves him alone once they are done, as per his request. He doesn't particularly want her too, but in the end he decides that he's been coddled by his big sister for long enough. Besides, he needs some time to get his thoughts in order.

She leaves like he asks, but not before she makes him promise to call in the morning. Arthur doesn’t mind as much as he would have few years back. Morgana is just worried about him.

He stands in the doorway after sending her off. He’s covered in filth; both his hands and his clothes. They'd worn gloves, but there's only so much gloves can do to protect one from all the grime down in the basement.

The water is hot, almost scalding when he finally steps into the shower, but he can't bring himself to turn down the temperature. It feels like the water is cleansing him, like every little drop that lands on his skin is helping to release the tension from his body. He just stands there for a few minutes, staring at his reflection in the full-length mirror and looks at his reflection.

The soulmark on his hip catches his eye.

He's had it ever since he turned three. It's about the size of the palm of his hand and in the shape of a dragon, and he loves it to pieces because it's the one thing he has of his soulmate.

It hasn’t always been like this. There were years where he hated it for making him different, where he avoided looking at it in the mirror or when he was changing.

He hated it, because it made Uther hate _him_.

When he was little, the dragon used to be mostly various shades of yellow and gold (he recalls dearly the times when his soulmate was always so happy), rarely interspersed with dark green (fear), red (anger), or dark blue (sadness). He'd always thought he was incredibly lucky to be bound to a person who was constantly happy and optimistic, who was always happy with whatever life had to offer.

He doesn't want to remember the day when his soulmark had turned such a dark shade of red that he'd mistaken it for black and spent the whole night panicking and wondering whether his soulmate was dead or dying and Arthur was never going to meet them.

The pain that signified the death of one's soulmate never came. He always felt an underlying dread, not sure if it was his own or if his soulmate's feelings were simply strong enough to be felt by him, but he never felt them _die_.

He's lost track of how much time has passed since it was last gold.

But right now, his soulmark is staring back at him in the mirror, all pale yellow and purple and blue, but there's no more deep, dark red anymore. It lifts Arthur's spirits like Morgana wasn’t been able to.

It gives him hope despite the day's events, and he goes to sleep much more relaxed than he has in months.

~oOo~

He visits Merlin in the hospital the next day. And the day after that, and all throughout the week.

He took two weeks off work. He hadn’t really wanted to, at first, but then Morgana had come over to his flat and told him that it was alright to give himself some time. She’d said that he’d also gone through a traumatic event and should allow himself some time to get past it.

He knows it’s his father talking, but Arthur still feels weak for giving in. He knows how to compartmentalise. It shouldn’t be taking him this long to get over the fact that his father is now a wanted man who kidnapped someone and held them captive in the basement for months.

On the fifth day he visits Merlin (and why can't he seem to keep away, he still doesn’t know), one of the doctors pulls him off to the side and tells him how he should try to limit his visits from now on, how Merlin probably imprinted when Arthur rescued him, and how this relationship (dare he call it a budding friendship?) is undoubtedly unhealthy for the both of them.

Arthur takes the words to heart. He doesn't visit Merlin the next day, no matter how much his brain seems to be urging him to go. He isn't planning on visiting the day after that either, since apparently both he and Merlin needed some space, but then he gets a call from the hospital in the middle of the afternoon because Merlin is refusing to eat.

"You left," Merlin accuses him once Arthur finally gets there, eyes shining with unshed tears, and Arthur feels the guilt threatening to suffocate him. "You said you wouldn't leave until I asked you to."

He never skips a visit after that, and after a few more consultations with the resident psychologists, the doctors stop telling him to.

~oOo~

It's three weeks after the rescue, on the day when Merlin is finally ready to leave the hospital, that Arthur finally realises just why he and Merlin have constantly been gravitating towards each other.

Detective Inspector Du Lac has been going on about how he’d like to put Merlin in protective custody, just in case Uther tried to go after him again, but Merlin has refused. No matter how much anyone (even Arthur) begged or pleaded, he wouldn’t relent and claimed that he’d had enough of being kept under lock and key.

They did, however, compromise. Wherever Merlin wanted to stay from now on, there would be a police patrol outside. Merlin would still be able to go about his everyday life, but he would be accompanied by at least one officer whenever he left his home.

After all the hours he and Merlin spent talking (although, granted, any and all attempts at conversation had been stilted for the first few days), Arthur now knows that Merlin has no one. His mother died three years back, and his uncle last year. He'd also lost contact with his best friend, Will, after they both moved to opposite ends of the country.

It had taken hours to calm Merlin down the other day, when he’d had a panic attack over the fact that he had nowhere to go once he got out of the hospital. His old flat had undoubtedly been leased to someone else by now, and he had no job and no money, and had, in no uncertain terms, told Arthur that he didn't know what to do with himself.

Arthur had come up with a simple solution -- he had asked Merlin to move in with him. His flat was spacious enough for at least four people to live comfortably, and it would be no trouble whatsoever to allow Merlin to stay in one of the guest rooms.

Merlin hadn’t agreed easily. Arthur hadn’t pushed, understanding of the fact that Merlin might want to spend some time away from people after what had happened. They’d debated the pros (Arthur would alway be there if Merlin needed help with anything) and cons (Merlin absolutely hated the thought of being allowed to stay at his flat absolutely free of charge -- in the end, he’d made Arthur promise to allow him to pay rent once he got a decent job. Arthur had reluctantly agreed.)

He wonders, later, how much of his desire to help stems from guilt.

On the day Merlin is allowed to leave the hospital, Arthur is there to pick him up. Merlin is changing his shirt when Arthur enters his room.

"There's this thing people do with their knuckles," Merlin tells him, whirling around. "It's called _knocking_." And Arthur would have thought of a clever comeback, he really would -- were it not for the fact that the soulmark on Merlin's own hip was an exact match to his own. As he watches, it turns from a joyful pale yellow to a surprised bright blue interspersed with dark green.

It's his soulmark. His _godsdamned soulmark_ and oh, so many things are starting to make sense now.

Like why he got so attached to Merlin so quickly, why Merlin wanted him to stay by his side all throughout his stay in the hospital.

Why his father, one of the most magic-hating (because that’s all soulmarks are, as far as anyone can tell), homophobic men he knows, went after Merlin.

Arthur realises he's staring only once Merlin sharply tugs down his shirt and clears his throat. Looking up, he sees that Merlin is glaring at him with a fierce blush on his cheeks.

"Sorry," Arthur says, wincing at how insincere the words coming out of his mouth sound. "I didn't mean to stare."

Merlin purses his lips and eyes him critically, but eventually deflates.

"'S all right. It's just a soulmark. Doesn't mean anything,” Merlin says, and Arthur just about feels his own heart crack in two.

"Oh," he whispers. "Right, yes, of course."

What else had he expected? It’s the same reaction most people had nowadays.

(Morgana had once told him about the days when soulmarks were treated as something precious, when people who had them were respected. That was back when magic had still been legal. Nowadays, mere years after the bill that once again allowed the use of magic had passed, soulmarks are still mostly treated with distrust, because how can someone trust something they don’t understand?)

Merlin is eyeing him suspiciously, and Arthur forces himself to tear his eyes away from him. He lets his gaze dart around the room, looking for something, anything to settle on. They finally land on the small backpack lying on the bed.

"Are you all packed and ready to go, then?" Arthur asks.

"Yeah. I mean, it's not like I had that much stuff in the first place," Merlin replies, and an awkward silence settles between them.

"Are you sure you don't want to go into witness protection?" Arthur asks after a beat. They've had this conversation again and again, but Arthur is still hesitant to let Merlin out of the hospital -- especially considering the fact that his fath- _Uther_ still hasn't been apprehended and no one knows where he is.

"For the last time, Arthur -- _yes_ ," Merlin argues. "You know I-- I told you I wouldn't be able to stand being confined t--" he breaks off, tears suddenly appearing in his eyes, and Arthur is sorry for even bringing up the topic.

"Besides," Merlin adds once he's managed to get his voice under control. "I'd prefer to stay with you. I trust you."

It's all Arthur can do to shoot a small smile in his direction.

~oOo~

The soulmark is the only thing he can think about during the drive back to his flat.

He'd never expected -- he _knew_ that it was weird for him to get so attached to someone so quickly, but he'd never expected something like _this_ . Rather, he'd thought about asking one of the hospital's psychologists. Maybe one of them _had_ imprinted on the other -- someone who wasn’t Merlin.

His thoughts inevitably circle back to Uther. Growing up in his house, Arthur had seen first-hand just how bigoted and unfair the man could be. All of his political career, he'd gone after people who were even the slightest bit different from him and his. If someone's skin was of a different colour, if their sexuality was defined as anything other than heterosexual, if they had soulmarks anywhere on their bodies, if they had _magic_ , they would, sooner or later, find themselves in Uther's crosshairs.

Probably sooner.

One of Arthur's most vivid childhood memories is that of the first appearance of his soulmark. He remembers being three and asleep, and being awoken by the feeling of warmth on his hip. He remembers not understanding what was going on, remembers calling for his father in fear.

Most of all, he remembers his father's furious gaze when he'd laid eyes upon the golden dragon that had inked itself onto Arthur. How he'd yelled at Arthur for welcoming magic into his own body when it was everything Uther had ever gone against.

How ashamed his mother would be if she had lived to see this day.

He remembers all the visits to ‘doctors’ he now knows were entirely illegal. He'd spent weeks being taken to see ‘specialist’ after ‘specialist’, until finally, one day, he'd ended up on a table in something resembling an operating theatre.

They'd put him under local anaesthesia, but it did nothing, _nothing_ against the immeasurable pain that the first injection of some sort of drug into the soulmark had brought him. He'd screamed then; screamed for his father, for the doctor, for everything to stop.

He remembers the connection between him and his soulmate withering, remembers feeling like he'd been dying.

Maybe he had.

Morgana came to live with them when Arthur was seven, and she didn't find out about his soulmark till ten years later. It was the devil's mark, his father had said. An ill omen. Something that should never, under any circumstances, be shown to anyone. It was ugly and horrible and _despicable_.

Morgana hadn't been scared, though. She hadn't rejected him either. Instead, she was the one who had finally taught him to appreciate the soulmark for what it really was -- a link, something connecting him to the one person in this universe who was _for him_ \-- the one person he was guaranteed to love with all his heart, no matter what obstacles came between them.

Convincing Arthur of all that had taken Morgana years. It wasn't until he was 24 that he'd finally stopped feeling ashamed at the barest thought of the mark on his hip.

But what happened to Merlin... Arthur knew that Uther was a bigoted and cruel man, but he'd never expected him to actually kidnap someone and keep them chained up in his basement for months on end.

The only reason Arthur could think of why Uther had taken such extreme measures was that, somehow, he'd found out that Merlin was Arthur's soulmate.

He'd found out, and had wanted to keep him out of Arthur's life. He probably would have killed him, if not for the fact that the fact that the death of a soulmate caused insurmountable amounts of pain that never fully went away.

"What are you thinking about?" He hears Merlin ask out of the blue and almost jumps out of his skin. Merlin is in the passenger's seat next to him, but he's leaning away from Arthur. He always does his best to stay out of reach of anyone touching him. At least he’s gotten better with maintaining eye contact.

"It's not important," Arthur replies, and he swears he glimpses hurt on Merlin's face before it disappears. No matter. The subject would only drudge up unwanted memories for the both of them, and there are some things Arthur simply isn't willing nor ready to talk about.

"If you say so," Merlin says, not making the slightest effort to mask the disbelief in his voice.

They spend the rest of the ride in silence.

~oOo~

As hard as it is to get himself to put effort into anything with Uther still on the loose, Arthur knows it must be so much worse for Merlin. Sometimes, it seems that the only thing keeping Merlin from collapsing entirely and turning into a ball of fear and anxiety and painful memories is the promise that Uther will be detained by the authorities the second he steps foot in the country.

Arthur knows that DI Du Lac will do everything in his power to make sure that Uther never sees the light of day.

Merlin turns out to be very easy to live with. He cleans up after himself and cooks sometimes, and if he spends a great deal of his time alone in his room, well, what’s Arthur to say? He understands social situations can be exhausting, and Merlin hasn’t completely healed yet.

Arthur just wishes that spending time with him didn’t tire Merlin out this much.

He tries to help Merlin look for a job at one point, but those plans quickly go out the window when Merlin suddenly comes to the conclusion that he won’t be able to stand being around so many people at once.

“I just need a break,” Merlin tells him. “I need some time to myself. I’ll pay you back for letting me stay here, I promise. I just need a little time.”

Arthur would have told him that no payments were necessary, but he knows from experience that that would only make Merlin angry.

So Arthur concedes, but makes sure to point out that Merlin is unlikely to get used to social interaction again if he never actually interacts with anyone. In the end, Merlin decides that it’s high time he started writing a book.

(“I’ve been planning it for ages, and I figured that I’m probably going to have a bit of free time for a while.”)

They also have a few more serious conversations, like the one where Merlin admits that he’s not sure why Arthur asked him to stay here at all.

“You had nowhere else to go. Besides, there’s something about you, Merlin,” Arthur replies. Of course, _he_ knows why he asked Merlin to stay with him and why he likes him so much, but as long as it’s up to him, he’s not going to tell Merlin. At least, not until the information is relevant.

He should tell him. He _should_. It would be the right thing to do, especially considering that it regards Merlin as well, but whenever Arthur just about musters up the courage to walk up to Merlin and tell say ‘I’m your soulmate’, he remembers Merlin’s reaction to Arthur having seen his soulmark.

 _It doesn’t mean anything_. To Merlin, maybe not, but to Arthur, it’s everything.

There’s also a conversation they have after Morgana visits the two of them for the fifth time in three days.

“She’s your sister?” Merlin asks him once Morgana finally leaves the flat.

“Half-sister,” Arthur corrects automatically.

“Does she always come over so often, or is it just because of your new living arrangements?” Merlin inquires. Arthur shakes his head as he’s gathering the dirty teacups from the table.

“I asked her to come over. I don’t particularly fancy spending so much time alone,” he replies, avoiding Merlin’s gaze.

“Oh,” Merlin says, and if after this, he stops hiding away in his room so much, neither of them bring it up.

~oOo~

Arthur knows Merlin startles easily. He knows, because he'd accidentally crept up on him a few times, and Merlin had instantly whirled around, hands up to protect his face.

But never had any of those situations ended up with Arthur being knocked back into a wall at the opposite end of the room.

The breath is knocked out of him, and he can feel something sticky dripping down the back of his head and neck. For a few moments, the only thing he can see is an all-encompassing blackness.

When he comes to, he can sense Merlin kneeling beside him and wants to get up, but his head is really starting to hurt right now, and he thinks the sticky thing on the back of his head might be blood. His ears are still ringing, but he can make out most of what Merlin is saying despite this.

"Arthur? Arthur, please" and "didn't mean to" and "oh gods, I'm so sorry" and worst of all is "Arthur, wake up. Please wake up. I can't -- without you. I can't. _Please_."

It's the last one that finally convinces Arthur to open his eyes.

Merlin's pale and shaking and scared. There are tears running down his face and right into the collar of his shirt, and his hands are fluttering all around Arthur as though he's scared to touch him.

By the time Arthur has finally managed to get his hands under him and pushed himself up into something resembling a sitting position, Merlin has scooted all the way over to the other end of the room and is looking at him, pupils blown wide with fear.

"Merlin?" Arthur asks. His voice is hoarse, and opening his mouth is harder than it used to be, but he pushes through it. He blinks once, long and hard, and when he opens his eyes again Merlin is curled up into a ball and breathing much too quickly to be healthy.

"Merlin?" he tries again, slowly moving over to the other end of the room, but Merlin's attention has wandered away from him by now. As Arthur slowly moves closer, his shirt rides up, exposing a splash of deep, dark green fear, occasionally intermixing with splotches of pink disgust and dark blue grief, and his heart aches at what Merlin must be going through right now.

"Merlin," Arthur repeats for a third time, laying his hand on Merlin's knee. Finally, _finally_ , Merlin's gaze darts to him, but his breathing's still wrong and he's still crying silently, and Arthur just _doesn't know what to do_.

"It's okay. I'm alright," he says, trying to remember what Merlin had been saying to him just a minute before, wondering what else could be scaring Merlin so badly. "See? I'm here. I'm fine."

Merlin just shakes his head, eyes still right on Arthur's own.

"I hurt you," Merlin chokes out amidst breaths. "Me-- I hurt you." And then, all of a sudden, it's like a dam breaks. "I didn't mean to, oh gods, oh gods ohgodsohgods. My magic, it slipped out of my control and I was so _scared_ and I'm sorry, I'm so, so sorry Arthur. I swear I didn't mean to. I swear it. you're the last person I would-- I could ever--"

Arthur allows himself to wrap Merlin up in an embrace and slowly rocks them both until Merlin's words dissolve into harsh sobs.

"I hurt you," Merlin says again, once he's finally managed to catch his breath.

"It's just a flesh wound," Arthur tries to joke, but it falls flat on both their ears. "Speaking of which -- the floor really isn't all that comfortable. What say you we move to the couch?"

Merlin doesn't nod, but he doesn't shake his head either, and Arthur takes that to be a good sign. He leaves one of his hands on Merlin's shoulder and uses the other to push himself up against the wall. The world twists and twirls all around him, and he has to blink a few times to get it to straighten out. By that time, Merlin has also managed to get himself upright and is looking at Arthur, visibly terrified but also emotionally exhausted.

Arthur makes to take a step in the direction of the couch, but he stumbles mid-step. If not for Merlin, he would have ended up right back on the ground.

"Your head is bleeding," Merlin tells him quietly. Arthur glances back at him, but says nothing because of the sudden bout of nausea that overcomes him. He lifts his free arm -- the one Merlin isn't holding onto -- and presses the palm of his hand against his forehead in an effort to stave off the worst of it. "Are you concussed?" Merlin asks.

Arthur tries to shake his head, but that rather quickly turns out to be a bad idea.

"No. Yes. Maybe," he says.

"I should drive you to the hospital," Merlin says, despite the fact that both of them know he doesn't have a driver's license. "Or call an ambulance," he adds almost as an afterthought.

"No," Arthur replies, thinking of the last time he'd seen an ambulance, how it had been Merlin who'd been lost and bruised and bleeding, and the last thing he wants to do is bring those memories forth again, for either of them.

Merlin's relief is almost palpable, but it doesn't last long.

"But you need a doctor, Arthur," he says, chewing on his lip. "You're bleeding. You're hurt."

"Call Gwen," Arthur decides. Gwen is a nurse at one of the local hospitals and Morgana’s current girlfriend. He'd tell Merlin to call Morgana herself, but neither of them are in a fit enough state to be able to put up with her right now, and it’s not like she would be able to do anything to help anyway. Gwen, on the other hand…

"Gwen can help," he says. She'll probably end up driving them to the hospital herself -- both because Arthur doubts Merlin is going to allow him to go alone, and because Arthur is reluctant to let Merlin out of his sight should Uther show up, and yes, this is despite the two police officers stationed outside of the flat.

"I'll go get your phone," Merlin says once they've finally managed to get Arthur settled on the couch. his head is throbbing, and he has half a mind to just take some painkillers right now, but whatever remains of his objectivity tells him that he should probably wait for Gwen before taking any drugs.

As he waits for Merlin to come back, he lets his eyes close. For a moment, he leans his head into the backrest, but the sharp pain emanating from his skull quickly corrects that mistake. The nausea seems to be getting worse, though, so Arthur moves to lie down on the couch, this time being careful not to allow his injury to touch anything.

Someone wakes him by shaking his shoulder, and he opens his eyes to see Gwen's worried face in front of him, with Merlin standing behind her and wringing his hands.

"Arthur?" she asks, and he spares but a second to feel annoyed. Is she asking him his name? She shouldn't be asking him his name. They've known each other for years; she should know his name. In any case, the irritation passes quickly once she goes on. "How do you feel?"

"Like I went five rounds with a paper shredder and lost," Arthur groans.

"That's... oddly specific," Gwen says, and as she turns back to Merlin, Arthur lets himself fade away again. "What happen--?"

~oOo~

When he comes to, it's the middle of the night and he's in the hospital. Merlin is sleeping in the chair at his bedside. Arthur spares but a moment to marvel at how their roles have been reversed -- how this is the first time Arthur is the one who is injured, and Merlin is the one tasked with taking care of him.

The most important thing he takes away from the situation, however, is the fact that his hand is encased in Merlin's own.

He's not... _unhappy_ with it, but he can't say he's too thrilled about it either. Merlin had made his thoughts on the topic of soulmates clear all those months ago, and, while he may not know that that's what he and Arthur are, Arthur doubts he'd take too kindly to the fact. Especially considering that this is something that Arthur's purposefully been keeping from him for months.

He lets his fingers tighten around Merlin's hand.

"'Rth'r?" Merlin mumbles in his sleep. A second later, his eyes are wide open, any vestiges of sleep gone from them, and they're staring right into Arthur's own.

Arthur refuses to let go when Merlin tries to pull his hand away.

"How do you feel?" Merlin asks, looking down at their joint hands in what Arthur hopes isn't panic. He didn't misread the situation, did he? Yes, he might be concussed, and his head hurts terribly, but he's still pretty sure that he has some semblance of wits about him.

"Headache," he replies. Merlin looks away guiltily. "When did we get here?"

"Right after you dozed off. Gwen said it was probably just a concussion, but she wanted to be sure." Merlin bites his lip, gaze flitting to Arthur and away again. "You needed stitches."

"Oh," Arthur says, because how is he expected to reply to that?

"Arthur, I'm so--" Merlin starts, but Arthur cuts him off with a well-placed finger to the lips.

"I know, Merlin. I know," he says. "But there's probably something we should talk about."

Merlin starts chewing on his bottom lip again, but nods.

"You have magic?" he asks. He doesn't feel betrayed. He _doesn't_. It's not like he should have  expected Merlin to tell him everything about himself the moment they met. And it's not like he still believes his father's conservative propaganda about how magic is a plague, how it just destroys and corrupts and is incapable of doing any good in the world.

Thinking of magic inevitably brings him back to the topic of soulmarks, because one is a byproduct of the other. Scientists have, time and again, tried and failed to understand how they work. The farthest they got was figuring out that soulmarks and everything to do with them is somehow coded in one's DNA, but there’s no way of knowing how it’s passed on. Is it a recessive gene? A mutation? No one is able to say for sure.

Ah, but he digresses.

"I do," Merlin says, looking defensive all of a sudden.

No, Arthur isn't betrayed. He's _hurt_. He's hurt because Merlin obviously felt like he couldn't trust him with something that was such an important part of him.

Right after that comes the guilt. It's not like he trusted Merlin either; not like he told him about the fact that they're soulmates.

A small part of him wonders which of the secret is capable of hurting their relationship more.

"You never told me," Arthur says. "We've known each other for months, and you never once mentioned it."

"And how did you expect that conversation to go? You come home from work one day and I just come up to you and say 'Hey, Arthur, you know how all your life you were raised to believe that magic was the devil's craft? Well, guess what -- I have magic.'" Merlin snorts. "You'd have kicked me out faster than I could say the word."

"Is that really what you think of me?" Arthur asks. Even to his own ears, he sounds hurt. "Did you really think that I'd kick you out now, after everything that's happened?"

Merlin watches him for a moment, then deflates.

"No," he amends. "I guess... I was just scared. It's just-- there's no telling how people react to the news, and I couldn't bear it if you began to think differently of me because of this. Besides, I thought, for a while, that it was gone. It hasn't wanted to work right since--" Merlin cuts himself off, eyes shuttering. "I didn't know if it would ever come back."

"I still wish you'd have told me," Arthur says.

"Oh, come off it. It's not like you don't have any secrets," Merlin argues, and Arthur can once again feel guilt welling up in the pit of his stomach. "Arthur?" Merlin asks tensely after a moment, eyes searching Arthur’s face. "Arthur, what's wrong?"

"Since we're on the topic of secrets," Arthur says. "Then I have one you should probably know about as well."

Merlin stares at him, confused, but doesn't say anything.

"You know how you have that soulmark on your hip? The one in the shape of a dragon?" Arthur asks hesitantly, and he waits until Merlin nods before continuing. "It's-- It matches mine," he adds, then moves his free hand to tug down the blanket and tug up his hospital gown, showing his own soulmark to Merlin as proof of what he's saying.

"What?" Merlin asks, voice strangled, and this time, it's Arthur's turn to avoid his gaze. He can feel his cheeks flush red with shame. "Ho-- How long have you known?"

"Since I picked you up from the hospital," Arthur answers. He moves to tug the nightgown down again, but Merlin stops him with his other hand.

"You never told me," he accuses, tightening his grip on the cloth. Arthur’s never seen him this angry before. "If you've known for so long, then why did you never tell me?" His other hand is removed from Arthur's within a second, and Arthur is left feeling inexplicably bereft and vulnerable.

"You said it didn't matter," Arthur says quietly. "That soulmarks didn't matter."

Merlin makes a frustrated noise in the back of his throat and buries his head in his hands. Arthur takes advantage of this to cover himself up again.

"That's because I didn't think it was you. And I was really starting to like you. I got so attached to you, so _quickly_ , and I had absolutely no idea why," Merlin whispers, looking up at Arthur from between his fingers. "You should have told me."

"That's a bit hypocritical, don't you think?" Arthur says drily. Yes, he should have told Merlin. _Of course_ he should have. But trust goes both ways, and it’s obvious that Merlin didn’t trust him enough to tell him about the magic either.

He would have told him, if only he could have been sure that Merlin wouldn’t have wanted to cut all ties with Arthur.

Merlin raises his head to glare at Arthur.

"Don't you dare. My magic -- that's my problem. But this? This is something that affects both of us!" Merlin exclaims. "Fuck, Arthur..."

"Yeah." Arthur says, staring up at the ceiling. "I know. But put yourself in my shoes. All my life, I'd been told that a soulmark is nothing but another one of magic's manipulative creations, and then when I _finally_ started to believe that it might be something more, that it might actually be a gift -- when I _finally_ found my soulmate, he told me that it didn't matter at all. Imagine how that made me feel," he says. He's not sure where this bitterness, this hidden resentment is coming from, but it's there now, out in the open and between them.

"This is so messed up," Merlin whispers.

"I know."

Merlin sighs, but moves to catch Arthur's hand in his own again.

"Let's start over," he tries. "Arthur Pendragon, will you kiss me?"

Arthur stares up at him for a moment, slightly disoriented by how quickly Merlin's mood changed. Merlin's smiling down at him crookedly. It's small, but it's there, and just like that, Arthur feels that everything will be alright between them. Maybe not right away, but Arthur is willing to wait.

Especially once he realises how good it feels when Merlin leans down and captures his lips in a kiss.

~oOo~

Merlin's panic attacks don't come often, but when they do, Arthur always feels terrible. Even after all this time, he's not sure what to do and how to help Merlin, and it's slowly killing him inside.

Merlin says he's doing fine, but Arthur doesn't feel it, not when he sees just how haunted Merlin looks after each and every one of his episodes. It's hard, seeing him like that, and Arthur wants to do more to help.

Merlin doesn’t want him to help. He’s scared that his magic will lash out again, and that it will hurt Arthur. It’s not an unfounded fear, and Arthur sincerely wants to help Merlin get past it, but Merlin refuses to listen to reason.

(“I wouldn’t be able to bear seeing you like that again,” Merlin whispers.)

The psychologist assigned to Merlin's case had told him to try talking to someone he trusts, and Arthur knows for a fact that Merlin trusts him, but he also knows that Merlin has trouble opening up to people and having serious conversations. You can only hide behind banter and teasing for so long.

He likes to hope that, one day, Merlin will tell him about everything he went through, because maybe then Arthur will understand and finally feel like he's able to _help_ in some way, but on the other hand, he's almost scared to hear about what Uther put Merlin through. Arthur knows it wasn't his fault, that none of this was his fault, and yet sometimes, he can't help but to feel as though he's responsible. If he'd fought harder, if he'd done more to convince Uther that he was wrong about magic and soulmarks, then maybe it would never have come to this. He and Merlin would have met each other in some other, more mundane way. Maybe Merlin would have ended up working for him as his PA. Maybe they would have met in front of a nearby coffee shop, when Merlin tripped over his own feet and spilled his cup of hot coffee all over Arthur's suit.

He can't help the smile that appears on his face at the thought of something like that happening.

But because of his father, that was all taken away, and now they're stuck living a life where both of them feel as though they're not good enough for the another.

Then comes the day Merlin finally breaks apart into pieces so little that Arthur can't even hope to put them back together.

They've never had sex, not once. Sure, they sleep in the same bed now, but that's because they like being around one another, and it's not like sex is a requirement to having a fulfilling relationship. Sure, it’s fun, and Arthur wouldn’t say no if Merlin asked but he doesn't think Merlin is ready for something like that, and he knows for a fact that no matter how much he loves the man currently wrapped in his arms, he himself isn't either.

It’s weird because he's never had thoughts like this before. He may not have slept around when he was younger, but in his other, ill-advised and short-lived relationships, they'd always moved onto sex pretty quickly.

And it's on one of those nights that he's torn from his slumber by the feel of Merlin shaking in his arms, and the sound of quiet sobs breaking the quiet of the night.

"Merlin?" he asks, moving one of his hands over Merlin's heart. "What's wrong?"

"N'thing. Go back to sleep Arthur." And he would, he really would, were it not for the fact that Merlin's heartbeat is faster than it should be (much too fast) and the sudden adrenaline coursing through his veins has him awake within seconds.

"Was it another nightmare?" Arthur asks quietly. They usually never talk about Merlin's bad nights, mostly because whenever Arthur brings them up, Merlin changes the topic, but he really hopes that they might be able to get somewhere this time.

He can hear Merlin swallow loudly, then feels him press his back further into Arthur's chest, burrowing into like he’s already burrowed into Arthur’s heart.

"I-- yeah," he whispers and moves one of his hands to cover Arthur’s own..

"Do you want to talk about it?"

This time, Merlin hesitates a while longer than previously, but when he eventually nods his head in assent, Arthur feels the tightly-wound ball of anxiety in his chest loosen.

"I... I was in the house again. And this time, you weren't there to get me out.”

~oOo~

_Merlin hadn't been working for Uther Pendragon for long. In fact, he was rather new at this whole assistant thing. Well, he actually worked as the assistant of Uther's assistant, but that was just a trivial detail. The point was, he had a job that he was new at, and while there was no love lost between him and his new boss, he was happy enough to finally have a way to be able to pay his rent on time. Besides, this job was temporary. He'd promised himself that he'd only stay here for a few months, maybe a year at the most, to gain the experience, and then he'd look for a job working for politicians whose causes he actually supported, and not ones whose manifestos went against everything that he was -- against everything he could never let anyone know he was -- a gay, soulbonded magical._

It's only a few more months, _was what he told himself whenever he had trouble falling asleep at night. Only until he gets the experience and manages to save up some money._

_The day he was kidnapped began like any other day. He got up far too early in the morning, ate breakfast, brushed his teeth, dressed, and was out of the house within half an hour. Granted, he may not have looked perfect, what with his skewed jacket and his untucked shirt and his undone tie, but he didn't think he looked too badly. Besides, he was just a general nobody -- it's not like anyone would take notice of him anyway._

_Except that that day was the day he got called in to personally assist Uther Pendragon with what was supposedly a Very Important Project._

_And that was the day that Uther Pendragon saw his soulmark after his shirt rode up when he was reaching for a binder laying on a high shelf._

_Merlin didn't realise anything was amiss at first. He'd always been told that Uther could be incredibly cold and distant, so he didn't think that his sudden attitude was anything out of the norm. It wasn't until the next evening, when he was walking to his car and he felt something stab into his neck that he finally realised that something was terribly, horribly wrong._

_When he woke up, he was chained up in the dark, and his magic was gone. The chains that bound him to the wall were heavy and rough, and they scraped against his skin unpleasantly with every little movement. It didn't take long for them to rub his wrists and ankles raw._

_He was shaking like a leaf. He didn't know where he was, he didn't know who'd taken him, and most importantly of all -- he had no idea_ why _he'd been taken. He was Merlin -- clumsy and idiotic and nothing but an assistant's assistant. He wasn't allowed anywhere near sensitive information, he had absolutely no contacts in the industry; he had nothing._

 _He was_ just Merlin _._

_It was only it finally sunk in that he'd been kidnapped -- once the terror had made his spine ramrod-straight -- that he finally started screaming. For help, or at least for someone to come down there and show him that no, this wasn’t some hallucination he was having._

_It didn't do any good. No light appeared; there were no voices, no sounds, no anything. He screamed and screamed until he couldn't scream any longer, and then he just curled up into fetal position and started crying._

_There was no way to judge how much time passed. It was dark and quiet and cold, and it was only now that Merlin realised he was shivering._

_He sat there for so long that he started to wonder whether he'd just been left there to rot._

_It wasn't until hours (minutes?_ days _?) later that he finally heard something. Footsteps. There was someone walking around above him. Was he in a basement? That would explain the lack of light._

 _He heard a door unlock, and then finally,_ finally _some light filtered in. After being kept in here for so long, it hurt his eyes. Merlin could barely see anything through the tears welling up in them._

_When he finally managed to blink them away, he saw Uther Pendragon standing before him._

_"Mr Pendragon?" Merlin asked, more confused now than before. "What's going on? Where am I?"_

_Uther was looking down at him disgustedly, and Merlin distantly wondered what he'd done to warrant that disgust. There was nothing he could ha-- oh. Oh._

_The magic. Or the soulmark. Either way, it must have been one of those._

_His thoughts were swirling in his head as he tried to figure out when Uther or any of his associates would have had the time or the occasion to learn something like that about him, especially considering that they were things he usually kept hidden -- especially the magic. Had he been followed? Had someone spied on him? Did Uther's people do this to all of the employees?_

_"Merlin," Uther greeted him with a sneer. "Where you are is none of your concern."_

_He didn't see the boot coming towards his ribs until it was too late._

_That was when the pain began._

~oOo~

Merlin is avoiding his gaze. Arthur considers himself lucky that he still hasn't pulled away from their embrace. In this position, with Merlin lying right on top of him, he can stroke his back or his hair and comfort him whenever he wants.

The only thing he dislikes is the tears that are dripping down his bare shoulder, and the fact that Merlin is hiding his face in the crook of Arthur's neck.

"I'm sorry that happened to you," Arthur says. He's not good at anything to do with emotions. In fact, he downright hates and avoids dealing with them, no matter how unhealthy it is. A byproduct of having Uther as a father, Morgana often says.

Merlin sniffles, but otherwise stays quiet.

"Do you feel better now?" Arthur asks, trying to coax a response out of him.

Merlin shrugs his shoulders, and Arthur's about to give up hope of striking up a conversation when Merlin finally speaks again.

"Not really. Just worn out and scared." Merlin laughs, but it comes out sounding dry and raspy, and Arthur has to fight not to wince. "Maybe it'll feel better tomorrow."

"Maybe," Arthur amends. "I don't know how this stuff works."

"What, emotions?" Merlin snorts, amused, and Arthur feels relief flood his veins.

"I'm no good at them -- which is probably something you should have noticed by now."

"Maybe," Merlin hums. "But then again, it's not like I actually have to ask you how you feel, what with the soulmarks and all. I can just check what colour mine is, or try to meditate and separate my own emotions from yours."

"You can do that?" Arthur asks, surprised. The furthest he'd ever gotten was being able to feel his soulmates emotions along with his own, but that only happened when he concentrated hard, or when the emotions were particularly strong. And after all these months, he has to admit he is tired of constantly living in fear.

He can't imagine how much worse it must have been for Merlin.

"Yeah. It takes a bit of practice, but you can get there," Merlin says. "It's pretty useful sometimes. Tells me when I should stay out of your way."

"Why would you nee--" Arthur starts to ask, but he breaks off when guilt floods him again. "You don't need to be scared of me. You know that, right Merlin?" he asks as Merlin once again begins to tense in his arms.

"I know," Merlin murmurs, nuzzling further into the crook of Arthur's neck. "I already told you, I can't always help how I react to things. And I don't--" he breaks off to take a deep breath. "--I don't like being around you when you're angry."

"I would never hurt you," Arthur promises, stroking down Merlin's back in an attempt to help release the tension.

"I know," Merlin repeats. "But I can't help feeling how I feel. It reminds me too much of _him_."

"Is there anything I can do?"

"I don't know," Merlin says. "Yeah, maybe. When you're angry, could you just go take a walk? Or just. Stay out of my way until you're calm again?"

"Of course," Arthur assents. "If it will make you happy."

"It will," Merlin says, finally lifting his head to look Arthur in the eyes. "It would mean a lot to me."

"Then consider it done," Arthur says, smiling at Merlin crookedly as he leans down to press a quick kiss against Arthur's lips.

Merlin's worth it. Merlin is worth absolutely everything Arthur has to give, and he wouldn't have it any other way.

~oOo~

Arthur is at work when the call comes in. The second his screen flashes the unknown number, he's struck with an irrational fear that something happened to Merlin. He checks on his soulmark before he answers, just in case.

"Arthur Pendragon speaking," he says into the phone, trying to instill his voice with confidence he doesn't feel.

"Mr Pendragon, this is DI Du Lac," says the voice from the other side, and the fear Arthur has been feeling since his phone first rang suddenly triplicates. "I'm calling to inform you that we've apprehended your father.

The relief is immediate. He feels it rushing through him, and if not for the fact that he's already sitting, Arthur thinks he would have collapsed.

His father is in prison. He tried to make contact with Morgana, who stalled him long enough for the police to trace the call.

Uther has been apprehended. Arthur can’t help that giddy laughter spilling from him. Arthur hangs up, then dials Merlin’s number to tell him the good news.

Merlin is finally safe.


	2. Chapter 2

Uther isn’t incarcerated for long, Arthur finds out later from Inspector Du Lac. He gets out on bail within a few hours of being arrested. Arthur doesn’t tell Merlin until he has to, until Merlin finally notices that something is wrong when they’re eating dinner later that evening.

He forces Arthur to tell him, and Arthur tries to break the news to him as delicately as possible.

“What do you mean he’s out?” Merlin whispers into the silence, face paler than Arthur’s ever seen it before, except for that one time--

The one time neither of them care to remember.

“He made bail,” Arthur says, staring into the depths of his cup of tea. “I’m surprised they let him go so quickly.”

“You said he’d be caught,” Merlin says, voice breaking. “You said they’d arrest him and I wouldn’t have to live like this any longer.”

“Merlin--” Arthur starts, but Merlin cuts him off.

“Stop. Stop, please.” He’s whispering again, head buried in his hands. When Arthur reaches out to touch him, Merlin all but bolts to his bedroom.

~oOo~

"He's out again," Merlin whispers from where he's huddled underneath the blankets, pale and shivering. Arthur hates seeing him like this. It's times like these that Merlin pushes him away the most, leaving him feeling helpless and guilty.

He would try to hug Merlin -- maybe pull him in for a kiss -- if only he wasn't so afraid that Merlin would push him away.

"He's not going to get you. I won't let him," Arthur promises for what feels like the umpteenth time today. He can't fault Merlin for being so afraid. He _can't_. Not when he himself was almost paralysed with fear the moment he realised that his father had been released from jail.

Apparently, it had been deemed that he wasn't a flight risk. They'd also decided that he was unlikely to cause harm to anyone.

Not for the first time in his life, Arthur is left resenting the fact that his father has so many friends in such high places. _Unlikely to cause harm_. If there is one thing he would never believe, it is that. Luckily, the officers assigned to Merlin's case said that there would be police constantly patrolling the house until the day of the trial, and maybe even for w few days after it if they could spare the resources.

Just in case.

Arthur doubts his father will be able to skip a trip to prison altogether, but there is a little voice inside his head warning him that he might be seriously underestimating Uther's capabilities. He’s a prominent politician, and he knows people everywhere. The people he doesn’t know, he can easily buy off. In any case, Arthur had sworn to himself that he wouldn't leave Merlin's side until he was absolutely sure that he was safe.

Which is how he ended up sitting on the bed near Merlin. Merlin, who'd gone back to the guest room instead of their shared room. Merlin, who is on the verge of another panic attack.

Merlin, who Arthur loves so much that he wonder how he ever managed to survive without him for so many years.

"You say that as though you can protect me yourself," Merlin says with a scoff, and Arthur has to fight not to feel hurt. He knows that he might not be the best person for the job, but there is one thing he can do better than anyone -- predict what his father is going to do next.

"I will. I promise you," Arthur says. "Now come out into the kitchen. You need to eat something; you haven't eaten a thing all day."

"Haven't been hungry all day," Merlin mutters. He looks at Arthur long and hard, and then turns over onto his other side, facing the wall. "I'll go later," he adds.

Arthur is stuck sitting there, once again unsure of what to do. As much as he resents the idea, he knows that what Merlin wants right now is to be left alone. As much as it hurts him to do so, he gets up and leaves.

He goes straight to the kitchen. It doesn't take him long to make two sandwiches (with plenty of ham and lettuce and tomatoes, because Merlin really needs to eat) and pour a glass of orange juice. He drops it off in Merlin's room, puts it on his nightstand.

He pretends not to notice that Merlin is only feigning sleep.

~oOo~

Merlin doesn't leave his room for days. The door stays locked to the outside world. The closest Arthur gets to Merlin is leaving him food at the foot of his door -- a door that Merlin only opens once he knows that Arthur is out of the house, either shopping for groceries or going in to work (but only when there's really no way to get around it).

Arthur lasts almost a week before breaking down in the shower. He doesn't know how long he stands under the spray of heat, just staring at his reflection in the mirror, and he has no idea when he ends up sitting on the tiles, crying like he hasn’t in years.

He wonders how his life has managed to take such a turn. When he was a child, he used to be so happy. Or, at least happier than he is now. He had Morgana, and he had his soulmate and their joy (even when he hated his soulmark, he loved knowing that someone out there is happy), and he had Uther. Uther wasn’t always a bad father. Overbearing and domineering, yes, but there were some memories that Arthur actually recalled fondly, like the time Uther had taken a day off work to watch Arthur’s football game, or the time he’d taken him go-kart racing on his birthday.

He hadn’t always been a bad person. Arthur doesn’t know when things could have changed so much, and how in the world he didn’t notice it. This was his _father_. He has a hard time reconciling the caring father figure from his childhood with the man who kidnapped and tortured his soulmate for months for no reason other than his own perverse pleasure and desire to keep him away from Arthur.

The only family he has left anymore is Morgana, and they haven’t had much time to see each other lately. Arthur tries to be at home as much as he can -- he _knows_ there is a patrol car constantly parked outside the flat, but still he wants to be here in case something happens to Merlin; and Morgana is busy with setting up her own company. The only contact they’ve had in these past few weeks is text messaging and the occasional phone call.

He misses Merlin. He misses talking to him, being able to wrap his arms around him; Arthur misses how he looks and how he smells, and he especially misses Merlin’s smiles.

Merlin’s locked himself away, and Arthur feels like he’s going crazy, all alone in their flat

There’s a knock on the door. At first, Arthur thinks he imagined it, but then it comes again, the sound a bit muffled because of the water still rushing from the showerhead.

“Arthur?” comes Merlin’s voice from outside the room. “Arthur, are you alright?”

Arthur doesn’t have the heart to tell him to go away, nor does he have the voice. His chest is still being wracked with sobs and no matter how hard he tries, he can’t seem to get them to stop.

He feels so _alone_. He hasn’t felt like this in ages, but despite this, he’s not sure he wants to see Merlin right now; not sure he wants Merlin to see him like this. As much as he hates to admit it, there’s a small part of him that’s grown to resent Merlin from leaving him all alone in this mess.

He doesn’t hear the door open, and he doesn’t realise Merlin is in the bathroom with him until he feels Merlin’s hand on his knee and almost jumps out of his skin.

“Arthur?” Merlin asks again, looking down at him worriedly. Arthur raises his hand to his face, trying to wipe away both tears and water. In the meantime, Merlin moves to turn off the tap, so that the water isn’t spraying all over them. The sudden coldness Arthur feels makes him shiver in spite of all the steam surrounding them.

“What?” he asks gruffly. He instantly feels guilty when he sees Merlin withdraw into himself again, but within a second Merlin is leaning in towards him again.

“It’s just. Your soulmark. It was blue,” Merlin tries to explain quickly. His other hand is hovering over Arthur’s arm, as though Merlin isn’t sure that it is be welcome.

Arthur isn’t sure, either.

“So that’s what it takes to get you out of your room these days?” Arthur asks cruelly. “Would you have bothered if it was any other color?”

He can see that Merlin is hurt by his caustic remarks, but he can’t bring himself to care, not when he himself is hurting more.

He understands that Merlin is afraid and terrified and panicked. What he cannot understand is why he locked himself away and shut Arthur out for so many days, leaving him here _all alone_ , when he knows that being alone is what Arthur hates and fears the most.

Arthur can’t understand how Merlin could have left him alone for so long, when to him, even a single day without Merlin seems like too much.

“Of course I would have!” Merlin protests, but he quiets down again when he sees Arthur’s scathing glare.

“Should have tried this days ago, then,” Arthur replies. He grips the shower bar to pull himself up off the floor, but his muscles still feel weak and his legs are all prickly from being kept in the same position for such a long time, and he almost crashes to the floor -- would have, if Merlin hadn’t caught him at the last second. Once he’s safely on his own two feet, Merlin grabs him what looks to be the fluffiest towel he can find and wraps him in it.

Arthur just stands there, staring at his reflection in the mirror.

The shower didn’t do much other than to make the shadows under his eyes more pronounced, and his eyes are red from all the crying and rubbing. He looks like a mess, and he feels no better.

And for the first time since he met Merlin, Arthur just wants him to go away and leave him be.

He pushes past Merlin and into his bedroom, and drops down onto his bed. He listens to Merlin shuffling around in the bathroom for a few moments, then turns to grab his book off the nightstand. Reading has always helped to calm him down. There is nothing quite like the lives of imaginary characters to take your mind off your own troubles.

And yet, he finds that he can’t concentrate. He ends up just reading the same sentence over and over and over again, all the while waiting for Merlin to finally leave the bathroom. He gives up on the book after a few more tries, but doesn’t put it away. At least this way, he’ll have something other than Merlin to look at.

When Merlin comes out, he doesn’t try to approach Arthur again, but instead opts to lean against the doorframe, just standing there and _staring_ , until Arthur can’t take it anymore.

“Is there something you need?” Arthur asks coldly, doing his best to avoid looking at Merlin altogether. He gets a few seconds of blessed silence while Merlin is presumably trying to organise his thoughts.

“I… I wanted to apologise,” Merlin finally says, voice quiet and timid like Arthur hasn’t heard it. “I know you were trying to help, and that you were worried. I just… I needed some time to think.”

“You needed a week. You needed to spend a whole fucking _week_ sitting alone in a room with an en suite to think. You needed to leave me here, all alone, without a thought as to how I might feel,” Arthur says. “I can’t imagine how hard this must be for you, or how scared you are, but damn it, Merlin! This isn’t all sunshine and rainbows for me either, and… and I needed you. But you weren’t there.”

“Arthur, I--” Merlin tries to say, but Arthur is having none of it.

“Just go back to doing whatever you were doing. I don’t want to look at you right now.”

“But I--” Merlin tries again. Arthur shuts him down.

“Please!” he says, voice breaking at the end. He ignores how his own breath is hitching, opting to glare at Merlin over his book.

Merlin stands there for a few more seconds, but eventually, he nods. With one last look at Arthur, he turns away and walks out of the room.

Arthur’s not sure, but he thinks Merlin spends the whole night in front of the door.

~oOo~

He still feels worn in the morning, which probably isn’t too odd, considering that he was up half the night wallowing in despair and self-pity. If only Morgana could see him now. She’d never let him live this down.

Well, she’d probably try to get him to talk it out and make him a cup of tea. She’d only start the mocking once he was feeling better. Despite what some of her employees thought of her, she wasn’t completely heartless.

When he walks into the kitchen, he crashes into Merlin.

“Arthur,” Merlin says, looking hesitant.

“Merlin,” Arthur replies, trying to push past him, but Merlin won’t let him.

“I think we should talk,” Merlin says, reaching out his hand to grab Arthur’s wrist. Arthur pulls it away.

“I’m not in the mood.” This time, Arthur does manage to push past him, but he comes to a stop the moment he notices the kitchen table -- or, more specifically, what’s on it. “What’s all this?”

“I… I made breakfast,” Merlin says. He walks past Arthur, making sure not to initiate any unwanted contact, and sits down at the other end of the table. “I thought we could talk while we eat?”

Merlin sounds so heartfelt and so uncertain that Arthur doesn’t have it in him to say no.

“What do you want to talk about?” he asks, taking a seat right across from Merlin. There’s eggs and bacon and cereal and sandwiches and anything else he could possible want to eat for breakfast. Arthur’s stomach growls. He’s starving and exhausted, and now that he’s awake enough to notice, the food on the table smells delicious.

“I wanted to apologise,” Merlin says as Arthur starts loading his plate with sandwiches and a bit of fried bacon on the side. It’s like a repeat of the previous night, except this time, Arthur is in a good enough mood to hear him out. “I shouldn’t have shut you out like that, especially after everything you’ve done for me.”

Arthur instantly shakes his head.

“No, Merlin. I helped you because I wanted to, because I _needed_ to. You’re my soulmate, of course I helped you. I just… I really hate that you left me here, alone. Especially in this situation. You’re one of the few people I wouldn’t be able to stand losing, Merlin, and you basically left me all alone, knowing that I--” Arthur grits his teeth.

(Arthur hates being alone. He despises it. When he was little, his father used to work incredibly long hours, and the only time Arthur actually got to see him was on the weekends. Before Morgana came to live with them, he was the only person in the house other than the occasional babysitter. They never lasted long. Arthur wasn’t very nice as a kid.

There was one time when he accidentally locked himself in the bathroom after coming home from school. His father had only realised something was amiss in the morning, when Arthur never came down to breakfast.

He was lectured once it was over and everyone had had a chance to calm down. His father had told him that he should have called for help when he realised someone else was in the house. Arthur would have. He really _would_ have, but he’d been so scared once he realised that the door wouldn’t open, that all he’d been able to do was curl up in the space under the sink and cry.)

“I know. I’m sorry,” Merlin apologises again, looking contrite. “I just needed to get my thoughts together, and I thought I could do that better if I was by myself,” Merlin explains.

“Did it work?” Arthur asks after a moment.

“Not really.” Merlin pours himself a glass of apple juice. “Turns out that spending so much time with nothing but my thoughts for company isn’t all that good for me,” he tacks on with a smile, and Arthur snorts in laughter.

“I feel like I should say that’s surprising, but that would be a lie,” Arthur teases, finally allowing the corners of his lips to turn up in a smile. It feels awkward and stilted, but he does it anyway. He’s finally gotten the social interaction he’s been craving for the past week, and he doesn’t particularly want to lose it now.

“I think this is one of those situations that calls for a lie,” Merlin snipes back, his smile turning into a grin. It’s not as sunny and radiant as his grins usually are, but in this situation, Arthur will take what he can get.

“Aren’t you the one who once told me that lies destroy relationships?” Arthur asks.

And finally, _finally_ , things feel like they’ve gone back to normal.

~oOo~  


Merlin starts sleeping in Arthur’s room again, and Arthur wouldn't even be able to begin to explain how relieved that makes him feel.

Except that this time, the whole sleeping thing is accompanied by sex:

"So," Merlin begins. "We've been in a relationship for a while now."

"Yes," Arthur says, though it comes out sounding more like a question than an answer. Merlin's looking up at him from where he's lying with his head on Arthur's chest, and for the first time in a while, the expression on his face is hard to read.

"Then I have a very important question to ask you," Merlin goes on, bringing up one hand to Arthur's face and letting his index finger trail down the length of his neck.

"Go for it," he replies, winding his arm around Merlin to pull him closer.

"Have you thought about sex?" Merlin asks after a few seconds of silence. "More specifically, sex with me?" He sounds so incredibly unsure of himself that Arthur tugs him closer and kisses him on the top of his head.

"Yeah, sometimes. Is it something that you want to do?" he asks.

"Very much so," Merlin says. He puts both of his hands on Arthur's chest to push himself up, then moves to straddle him. Arthur lets his hands rest on Merlin's hips. He squeezes a little, just to hear the muffled moan Merlin voices at the feeling.

Their gazes lock when Merlin leans down to press a kiss to Arthur's lips. Arthur eagerly reciprocates. He sucks on Merlin's bottom lip first, tries to take it slow, but Merlin is having none of that. He licks along the length of Arthur's lips, before pushing his tongue inside to deepen the kiss. One of Arthur's hands comes up to tangle in Merlins hair, and Merlin's fingers bite deliciously into his pecs. He moans when one of Merlin's fingernails scrapes against his nipple.

"He likes that, does he?" Merlin asks, pulling away with a devilish grin on his face. He scoots down the length of Arthur's body, making sure to rub his arse against Arthur's growing erection as he goes, and settles again on Arthur's thighs. Arthur tries to reach for him again, but Merlin takes both of his wrists into one of his hands and pins them up over his head. Arthur can't help the way his hips buck upwards at the action. "Have I discovered a kink? Two?"

"Seems that way," Arthur says. He's about to add something else, but that's the moment Merlin decides to lower his head to Arthur's chest and wrap his mouth around Arthur's nipple. He sucks on it, hard, and Arthur's hips hitch upwards again. "Fuck, Merlin."

"We'll be getting to that," Merlin tells him, looking up. His lips are all red and swollen from the kissing, and his pupils are blown wide with lust. He's the most beautiful sight Arthur has seen in ages. "I think I saw some condoms and lube in the bottom drawer of the nightstand?

"Y-yeah," is all Arthur manages to get out, because Merlin decides to start laving his tongue over Arthur's nipple again. It's warm and wet and it feels so _fucking_ good that Arthur tries to free his hands from Merlin's grasp so that he could have a way to pull him closer, to get further into that warm heat. In all the time he's spent on this planet, he's never quite realised just how sensitive his nipples are.

Merlin just tuts at his futile attempts to get free, and then his eyes glow gold and Arthur feels something wind against his wrists and tie them to the headboard.

"All right?" Merlin asks. Arthur tests the bindings, then nods. The ropes -- are they ropes? He doesn't particularly want to look away from Merlin for long enough to check -- are tight around his wrists, but  no matter how much he moves, they leave no abrasions. They're oddly warm and soft, and Arthur's arms start to tingle where they're in contact with his skin.

"Absolutely. Go back to whatever it is that you were doing. Don't hold back on my account." He shivers when Merlin's breath ghosts over his nipple, the sensation intensified by the wetness all around it.

Merlin reaches up to playfully flick Arthur's nose with his free hand, then finally, _finally_ , moves his head back down again. This time, he mouths at the other nipple, but he moves the thumb and index finger of his right hand to pinch the first one.

Arthur nuzzles his face into Merlin's hair, trying not to fall apart because of the sensation. Merlin licks and sucks steadily for a while, before beginning to make his way down Arthur's chest, peppering kisses and sucking love-bites as he goes. He ends up staring at Arthur's hip, and places one last, loving kiss over the head of the dragon. It's shining golden right now, just like Merlin's, and Arthur's heart feels like it might just burst in his chest because of how happy he feels; because of how right everything feels now that he and Merlin are together.

"It's gorgeous," Merlin says, gazing at the dragon with fondness in his eyes.

"You're gorgeous," Arthur counters, grinning up at him, cheeks flushed red with embarrassment. He half expects to be called out on being a big sap, but Merlin doesn't go that far.

"Such a flirt," Merlin comments instead, leaning up to plant a kiss on Arthur's lips.

"You love it," Arthur says, once they break apart again, gasping for breath.

"I do," Merlin admits, sitting back on Arthur's thighs, letting one of his hands ghost over the bulge in Arthur's pyjamas. "I love you," he whispers, and then repeats it more loudly before Arthur can start to wonder if he'd misheard.

"I love you, too," he tells Merlin, and Merlin's answering grin is blinding in its intensity. "Of course you had to wait for the first time we had sex to tell me that. You couldn't have done it beforehand, could you? When I was still in a state where I was capable of thinking straight?"

"If you can form sentences as coherent as those, I think your thought are doing just fine," Merlin retorts. Arthur snorts, but doesn't protest. "Besides, doubt there's anything straight about your thinking on any given day of the week."

Arthur has no time to retort because Merlin reaches down again, and he finally deigns to wrap his hand around Arthur's erection. Arthur's sharp intake of breath is more than enough confirmation that he's enjoying what Merlin is doing, so Merlin starts stroking along the thick length, from base to tip, letting his his thumb catch the small beads of precome forming at the head of Arthur's cock. He moves his other hand down to touch Arthur's balls; delicately, at first, then moving to massage them with more force. Arthur has to bite his lip so as not to cry out at how good the combination feels.

"Don't want to come yet," he moans, feeling like he's going to be tipping over the brink any second now. "Want to come inside you."

"Yeah?" Merlin asks, and then all of a sudden, his touch is gone entirely, and Arthur is left feeling bereft. "Are you sure? You don't have to do this just because I asked you."

"For fuck's sake, Merlin. If I didn't want to be doing it, I sincerely doubt I'd be lying here under you like this," Arthur says. "Get the condoms and the lube. I want to see you prepare yourself."

"Bossy," Merlin remarks, but he obeys nonetheless. With another flash of his eyes, the drawer is open, and the items Arthur asked for float out of them and right into Merlin's waiting hands. He puts them down on the mattress for now, and stands up to rid himself of his pyjama pants and boxers. Once he's done with that, he moves to help Arthur pull down his own, asking him to lift his hips to help the process.

Their clothes make a messy pile on the floor, and Arthur needs to remember to put them in the laundry bin before Merlin steps on them, slips, and breaks his neck.

Merlin without clothes, though... he's gorgeous. All lean and pale and utterly drop dead gorgeous. All in all, Arthur considers himself a very lucky man to have such a boyfriend.

Once their clothes are off, Merlin situates himself back on top of Arthur's thighs and reaches for the tube of lube. He uncaps it squeezes some out onto his fingers. The tube falls to the bed again, and Arthur watches as Merlin's fingers go lower until they're right outside his entrance. Merlin spreads his legs wider, making sure that Arthur can see everything, before slowly pressing in two fingers at once.

"Fuck," Arthur groans at the sight, delighting at the hitches in Merlin's breath. "You have no idea how hot you look right now."

"Nowhere near as hot as you," Merlin says, all smiles and dimples and flushed cheeks. He starts moving his fingers in and out of his arse at a steady pace, scissoring them to stretch his muscles. It's not long before he's adding a third finger, and then even manages to fit his pinkie in with a wince.

"I think you're ready," Arthur says, watching as the lube glistens in the light. It's all over Merlin's hand and his arse, and some of it's even dripped down onto Arthur's legs.

"Think so too," Merlin says amidst pants. He takes out his fingers and wipes them off on the sheets (Arthur will make him clean them later), before reaching for the condom wrapper and ripping it open. He takes the condom out, grabs the lube again and presses a drop of it into the rubber, and then he's rolling it onto Arthur's cock, which is still hard despite how neither of them had paid it any attention at all for the last few minutes.

Merlin rises to his knees and moves forward so that he's right above Arthur's cock, then reaches back to guide himself onto it.

They both moan as the head goes through the tight muscles at the entrance, but Merlin's stretched himself so well and used so much lube, that the rest of the slide is absolutely effortless. Merlin settles on Arthur's cock and squeezes to get used to how it feels inside him. Arthur moans again.

"I missed this," Merlin sighs. "Sex."

All Arthur manages to do is hum in agreement, too focused on not thrusting into Merlin's tight heat until Merlin gives him the go-ahead.

Merlin doesn't do that just yet. Instead, he leans down so that his face is right in front of Arthur's and starts kissing him again. Arthur lets Merlin run his tongue over Arthur's lips, then further over his teeth, and when Merlin sucks lightly on Arthur's own tongue, he's glad he's lying down because otherwise, his knees would have buckled underneath him and sent him crashing to the ground.

It gets better when Merlin's fingers return to Arthur's nipples, caressing and pinching lightly. When Merlin begins to move, lifting himself up and down on Arthur's cock, the pleasure becomes much more pronounced. Arthur brings up his legs, so that the soles of his feet are up against the mattress,  and begins to thrust in time with Merlin's movements.

"Ah. Arthur," Merlin moans in pleasure against his mouth. Arthur must have hit his prostate. He tries to aim for that particular spot again, and is rewarded when Merlin accidentally bites down on Arthur's bottom lip at the feeling. "Yeah, keep doing that."

From then on, everything is a blur. Their bodies rock together in a pile of heat and sweat and pleasure, and before he knows it, Arthur feels his balls drawing up against his body and his muscles tightening in preparation for his climax.

Merlin moves one of his hands to his own cock, stroking it at the same pace Arthur is thrusting inside him, and it becomes a race to see who finishes first.

In the end, Arthur does. All it takes is a few more thrusts, and he's coming inside Merlin. Merlin follows him over the edge after another three strokes of his cock, his come splattering against Arthur's chest. Arthur groans, oversensitive, as Merlin's arse spasms around him.

Merlin lifts himself up on shaky legs and moves to lie down next to Arthur. His eyes flicker gold again, and the ropes fall from Arthur's wrists, disappearing into nothingness.

He wishes there'd been no condom between them, so that he'd be able to watch his spend drip out of Merlin as they lay on the bed. They should get tested, he thinks.

Arthur uses his newfound freedom to reach down and take off the condom. He ties it off at the end and throws it in the general direction of the wastepaper basket. He doesn't get the angle right, and it bounces off the side. That's alright. He'll clean it up later, once he and Merlin get some well-deserved rest.

Speaking of which, he should probably get himself a towel to wipe Merlin's come off his chest, lest he regret it in the morning. He wants to, he really does, but the nearest towel is in the bathroom, and he doesn't think his legs will be steady enough to take him there anytime soon.

"So," Merlin says, looking up at him with a fond smile. "What do you think?"

Arthur purses his lips and pretends to think about it, then laughs when Merlin elbows him in the side.

"I loved it. It was amazing," he tells Merlin truthfully. "You were amazing."

Merlin smile transforms into a grin, and he hides his face in the space between Arthur's shoulder and his neck to hide his blush. Arthur sees it anyway.

"You're adorable when you blush," he says, if only to see Merlin's blush deepen, painting the tips of his ears a bright red colour.

"Shut up," Merlin complains, but Arthur can still feel him smiling against the side of his neck. Arthur huffs in laughter, then turns to lie on his side so that he faces Merlin.

"I think we should take a shower," Arthur says, in the hopes that maybe Merlin will be more motivated than he is to get up. "I'm all sticky and disgusting, and you're covered in lube."

"I hadn't noticed," Merlin snarks, and Arthur sticks out his tongue at him in a display of immaturity that would make Morgana raise at least one eyebrow. "But I'm really fucking tired after all that."

Arthur snorts.

"So am I," he says, raising one of his hands to ruffle Merlin's hair. "But we should really take that shower."

Merlin groans and buries his head in the pillow.

"Merlin," Arthur says, poking his stomach. "Come on."

"No," Merlin growls, defiant. "I'm not moving. The sex broke me." Arthur can see that Merlin's eyes are already closed, and he knows that once that happens, nothing short of the apocalypse can get him out of bed again.

"Hey, no, don't fall asleep," he tries, but it's already too late. Merlin's eyelids flicker in protest, but he's already so far gone that he doesn't bother to answer.

Arthur sighs. He forces himself to sit up, then reaches down to their pile of discarded clothes, and digs around until he finds his boxers. He swipes them across his chest, wiping off the come, then drops them back onto the pile and goes to curl up around Merlin.

The duvet is on the other side of the bed, and it takes a bit of manoeuvring to get it over the both of them, but Arthur instantly feels better now that he's not exposed to the cold night air. He tugs Merlin closer and closes his eyes.

He falls asleep almost instantly.

~oOo~

From then on, their relationship seems to take a turn for the better. Arthur is more aware of Merlin's feelings at any given moment, though it's still hard to tell them apart when his own thoughts are spinning around in chaotic circles.

Merlin seems to be smiling more. He walks around the flat with his laptop in hand, playing music and writing his book, and talking to Arthur every time the two of the are in the same room.

Arthur _likes_ it.

Never before had he thought he would be so comfortable sharing his space with another human being, yet with Merlin, it seems effortless. Whenever Arthur isn't at work (or, as Merlin calls it, 'ordering around his minions'), they spend their time in front of the telly, making their way through all the TV series Merlin missed.

Merlin seems to take a particular liking to Jessica Jones. Arthur can sympathise.

He's not sure how Merlin's book is coming along, since he doesn't particularly want to let Arthur read it, claiming that it's still a rough draft, and that it needs a truckload of editing before it's in a state to be read by reasonable people.

("No problem there then," Arthur says, grinning, and Merlin just shakes his head and pushes Arthur away so that he won't see what's on the screen.)

In the end, Merlin lets him read part of it because he has no one else to look over his work and help him with some plot holes. Merlin may keep going on about how it's not really that good yet, but Arthur can see the potential. The story is about a king of a faraway land and his best friend, a sorcerer who works in the shadows to protect him. It's wonderful, because it showcases the sorcerer's thoughts, and talks about what he's going through as he struggles to keep his magic a secret from his magic-hating best friend.

It grants insight into the mind of someone who has magic and hides it for fear of rejection. With a bit of luck, many of the people who read it will come to understand that no, magic is not some terrible thing to be kept a secret despite it being legal, but a gift that can protect those you care about.

Arthur wishes he could travel in time to the future and read the finished version.

When Arthur comes home from work, he and Merlin try to put together a semi-decent meal that would, no doubt, make any other person gasp in horror, but it's the best they can do. It's edible and nutritional, and in the end, isn't that what counts?

Merlin doesn't seem to think so.

("I wish this chicken actually tasted like chicken," he grumbles one evening, and yes, Arthur agrees with him, but it's not like he's actually going to tell Merlin that.

"Stop complaining and eat your dinner," he says instead, biting into a chicken breast, then making straight to the fridge for a glass of milk as the taste of chilli explodes in his mouth.)

Morgana comes over for dinner a few times (he says 'comes over _for_ ', but he means 'comes over _with_ ', because Morgana is a marginally better cook than he or Merlin. On the few occasions Gwen comes with her, she makes the food because Gwen is good at everything). Eventually, they give up and and stick to buying prepackaged meals or takeaway. It’s not like Arthur doesn’t have the money. Besides, it’s probably the healthier alternative anyway.

They try to get better at communicating with each other, too. The fact that they’re soulmates isn’t some magical cure-all, and they still argue sometimes, but they try to talk it out instead of going off somewhere, away from each other. Merlin tries not to retreat to his room, and Arthur does his best not to bury himself under a mountain of work.

They get it wrong sometimes, and the arguments spiral out of control and end with one of them leaving the room to cool off, but they get it right sometimes, too, and everything somehow balances out.

All in all, despite Uther managing to temporarily worm his way out of prison, their life isn’t so bad. If anything, Arthur thinks it’s going quite well, especially taking into account all the issues both he and Merlin have.

Of course, he should have known that their little oasis of peace couldn’t last long.

~oOo~

He won’t be fast enough.

Arthur knows he won’t be fast enough, but that doesn’t stop him from trying to get to his house as quickly as he can. He’s already called the police, but they’re going to be too late, just like Arthur is going to be _too late_.

He’s going to be too late in getting there, and Merlin will be gone and it’s all going to be his fault.

It was just supposed to be a quick trip to the grocery store, just to get Merlin those fruit candies he likes. He was supposed to be gone for fifteen minutes, maybe half an hour at most. He’d even taken his car.

And then he’d gotten a message from his fath-- no, from _Uther_ , and it was a repetition off all the things Uther had always been telling him when he was young, about how magic corrupts, how soulmarks are the devil’s plaything, and how Arthur had allowed himself to be corrupted, but that was alright, because Uther was going to fix it, was going to ki--

 _No_. Arthur grits his teeth so hard that they start to hurt. It won’t get that far. Arthur won’t let him.

It was supposed to be a quick trip to the grocery store, but then he’d gotten a flat tire and the text message, and had been left with nothing but Merlin’s _damn_ candies and a mounting fear for Merlin’s life.

He can see the building his flat is located in now. The police car is still parked in front of it, and Arthur swears that he can see two silhouettes inside, but he must be imagining things, because _surely_ the officers would have left the car and gone after Uther by now. They would have noticed something was amiss. It was their _job_.

Arthur almost trips over a crack in the sidewalk as he runs, trying to get closer. He can feel his hair sticking to his forehead; how sweat is trickling down his spine and soaking into his shirt. He’s panting for breath. He’s been running for so long, and he isn’t in the best of shapes to begin with, and it’s so hard to actually get a mouthful of air, but that’s alright, he can’t stop _won’t_ stop until Merlin is safely in his arms.

As he nears the patrol car, he sees that the silhouettes are now nothing more than dead bodies, bullets shot right through their heads. There are pieces of glass the ground, and as he runs, Arthur feels them dig uncomfortably deep into his shoes.

Within a split second, he’s opened the car door and reached for the dead officer’s gun. He feels terrible doing this, he really does, but it’s not like he has any other choice. Uther has Merlin and Merlin is in danger, and as much as Arthur would like to, he can’t protect him with nothing but his hands. He needs a weapon, especially considering the fact that Uther most definitely has one, and this is the easiest way to get one.

He enters the key code and takes the stairs two at a time, unwilling to wait for the elevator. Not for the first time in his life, he’s thankful for the fact that his flat is only on the fifth floor out of the twenty floors this building has. While taking the stairs isn’t exactly quick, it’s definitely much faster than taking the elevator would have been, and besides -- the last thing he wants to do is alert Uther of his arrival.

The door to his flat is open, even if only by a sliver. Carefully, Arthur switches off the safety and pushes the door until it’s open enough that he’s able to easily get into the flat.

He’s so fucking glad for taking all those self-defense classes.

The flat is quiet. Too quiet. With a pounding heart, Arthur takes a few more steps, hoping against all hope that Merlin is still alive.

No, _knowing_ that Merlin is still alive. Arthur would have felt it if he’d died. The soulmark would have let him know. He’d heard stories of how they burn and turn black, and his still feels just fine, though now that he gives himself a moment to focus, he can feel Merlin’s fear.

That doesn’t at all help the dread that’s slowly starting to consume what seems like every single cell in his body.

He creeps through the hallway and into the living room, taking extra care not to step onto that one floorboard that always creaks. He wishes that he’d gotten it fixed. Merlin was always telling him about how he should get it fixed.

He doesn’t hear sirens yet. Why doesn’t he hear sirens?

He called the police the second he got Uther’s call, and they should _fucking_ be here. He wonders who Uther bribed or blackmailed to stall the Met.

As it turns out, all his carefulness is for naught. Uther is standing in the living room, waiting for him, and pointing a gun against the side of Merlin’s head.

But Merlin -- _Merlin_ is still blessedly alive. Handcuffed to a chair, gagged, and beaten to what looks like an inch of his life, but if Uther’s bothering to point a gun at his head, then Merlin must still be breathing. Arthur just wishes he would open his eyes.

“Arthur,” Uther says. “I see you finally made it.”

“Uther,” Arthur replies, raising his own gun so that it’s level with Uther’s head. All his years of self defence and shooting classes suddenly come back to him, and he straightens his stance and squares his shoulders. “Let him go.”

“ _Him_ ?” Uther asks, voice raised and crazed. He gestures towards Merlin with his gun, and it takes all of Arthur’s strength so as not to throw himself at Uther to get him away from Merlin. “This… _thing_ has manipulated your mind so much that you’ve lost any and all resemblance to the son I once had. You have a future, Arthur! I will not let you waste it because of some misguided sense of loyalty.”

“He’s my soulmate!” Arthur shouts right back. “He never manipulated me, not once! The only thing Merlin has shown me was unconditional love.”

“ _Love_ ,” Uther scoffs. “If that is what you think this is, then you must be more foolish than I thought. This _love_ is nothing but the product of magic, Arthur. If only you could hear yourself.”

“It’s not, though, is it?” Arthur says right back. “Soulmarks have been a topic of debate in the scientific community for years, but every single scientist who had ever studied them knows that the only thing they do is direct you to the person you will love the most. Magic can’t make you truly love someone, Uther. It can’t bring about emotions that you don’t on some level feel. You’re just a crazed old man who’s been ignoring the truth for years, even when it was staring you right in the face.”

“Is that any way to address your father, Arthur?” Uther asks darkly. “You have no idea what this kind of magic did to our family. You don’t know how much it destroys lives!”

“No, I don’t,” Arthur agrees. Uther seems momentarily appeased, but that only lasts for a few seconds before Arthur starts speaking again “But I spent half my childhood being lugged around from doctor to doctor, from surgeon to surgeon, and all because you wanted to get rid of my soulmark. Do you have any idea how much pain I went through? Do you know what that ‘medication’ did to me? How filthy I felt whenever you or your friends mentioned anything to do with soulmarks and soulmates? You don’t know what that’s like!”

“This sorcery killed your mother!” Uther bellows, finger twitching over the trigger of the gun.

“No,” Arthur replies coolly. “That was you. You’re the one who went against everything soulmarks stand for and had an affair for _years_ . You left her without actually leaving her. For years I spent blaming myself for her death, thinking that it was my fault she died. ‘Postpartum depression,’ the doctors said. But it wasn’t, was it?” Arthur goads, inching closer to Uther while he’s still standing still with pent up rage. “It was the abandonment. You left her when she needed you the most. You left your _soulmate_ ,” Arthur spits. “And she killed herself because she couldn’t stand the thought of being abandoned by someone who was supposed to love her unconditionally.”

“This is the magic talking,” Uther says quietly, raising his free hand to wipe at his face. “This isn’t you, Arthur. This is the magic.”

“It’s all me,” Arthur promises.

“It’s corrupted you,” Uther says, sounding like he’s talking to no one other than himself. “But that’s alright. It’s alright, I’m going to fix it, and everything will go back to normal.”

Arthur lunges at him when he sees his finger start to press on the trigger. From then on, it’s one large tussle, with him trying to pin Uther to the ground, Uther trying to throw him off, and the guns somewhere between them. He feels Uther’s knee dig into his stomach and coughs, gasping for breath, but he doesn’t let up. This is his only chance of saving Merlin, of giving them both a happy ending after everything they had been forced to endure.

And then one gun goes off. A second later, so does the other.

Arthur lands on the floor as Uther gets up and tries to stagger away. He tries to push himself up, but crashes back down a second later.

That’s when the pain comes.

It blossoms across his stomach, much like the blood slowly seeping from the bullet wound. It’s all-consuming, and he has to fight so as not to scream and shout at all the gods at the unfairness of it all.

This is how it ends, then -- with Merlin beaten and cuffed to a chair and Arthur bleeding out on the ground, killed by his own father. It almost makes him want to laugh.

“Arthur?” he hears someone say from somewhere above him. He only realises that his eyes are closed once he has to open them. “Arthur?!” This time, the shout is more panicked, but he still can’t seem to locate the person the voice belongs to. All he sees is the white, white ceiling and wait, didn’t Merlin say he wanted to paint it blue? Maybe he should let Merlin paint it blue--

There’s an annoying high pitched noise coming from somewhere. Someone must have left a crime show running on the telly.

Then, Arthur hears an explosion and shots, and everything else starts to fade.

“Arthur!” someone shouts. Merlin. That sounds like Merlin. Maybe Arthur forgot to take out the trash again, and that’s why Merlin is shouting at him? Arthur opens his mouth to apologise, but all that comes out is some thick, metallic substance that tastes a bit like blood.

_Oh._

He’s been shot, hasn’t he? Shot by his own father.

Merlin. Merlin’s here, too, hurt and bleeding, and oh no, this won’t do. Arthur can’t waste time just lying on the floor when Merlin’s still in danger.

“Get _away_ from him!” comes a shout, and then there’s another blast.

Footsteps. He thinks he hears footsteps. He’s about to try to lift himself up so that he can see what’s going on, but then something presses down _hard_ on his stomach and he has to fight to keep from screaming.

“Merlin,” he whispers, half-delirious with pain. “Where’s Merlin?”

“I’m here,” says the person again. Merlin? That’s Merlin? But how can Merlin be here when the last Arthur saw of him, he’d been cuffed to a chair? “You’re going to be alright,” Merlin says, and Arthur wants to laugh again, but instead he coughs and feels more blood trickle down his jaw.

“The ambulance should be here soon,” says someone else. Or maybe that’s Merlin talking again? He can’t tell anymore. But it has to be Merlin; there was no one else in the room, other than Uther, but Arthur doubts he’d be calling an ambulance.

There’s a hand on his face, a thumb stroking over his jaw.

“You stupid clotpole,” Merlin says. “You should have just left me there and made sure you were safe. You can’t die; I can’t do this without you.” Arthur feels something wet fall on his face. For a second, he wonders whether it’s rainwater, but then he remembers that he’s indoors.

There’s another hard press on his abdomen, and Arthur’s world fades entirely.

~oOo~

The beeping sound Arthur hears as he wakes gives him a weird sense of déjà vu. He tries to push himself up from the bed, but collapses again almost instantly when pain runs through his entire abdomen.

He looks around the hospital room as he tries to catch his breath, and to his disappointment, he finds that there’s no one in the room with him.

Right on its heels comes fear, because what if the reason Merlin isn’t here is because he;s more injured than Arthur initially presumed? What if he’s lying in a coma somewhere while Arthur is stuck in this bed?

Arthur pushes himself up again. This time, he manages to sit up and grab onto the IV drip. He carefully twists his body around so that he can plant his feet firmly on the floor, then uses the IV drip to push himself up.

He doubts he’ll make it far in his condition, but that won’t stop him from trying to get as far as he possibly can before whatever is left of his energy runs out.

Arthur struggles to make his way to the door, leaning on the drip so heavily that he’s afraid for a moment that it will break under his weight (he’s actually a bit surprised when it doesn’t). Then, he pushes the door open and walks out into the hall.

His stomach hurts again, and he really hopes that that weird feeling he’s getting isn’t blood trickling from a reopened wound, but he really, really thinks it might be. He’s probably ripped a few stitches.

Arthur doesn’t know where to start the search. He could go ask a doctor or a nurse, but he’s afraid that they’d sooner send him back to his own bed than tell him where Merlin is. As such, he decides that the wisest course of action will be to check every room.

Walking around with a bullet hole in your stomach is harder and more tiring than expected, and by the time he’s reached the end of the hallway, Arthur feels just about ready to collapse. He’s not sure whether or not to be happy when he crashes right into a nurse when he turns the corner.

“Arthur!” she admonishes. Arthur has to blink twice before he realises that the person standing before him is Gwen. “You should be in bed.”

Arthur looks at her guiltily, but doesn’t back away.

“I’m looking for Merlin,” he tells her, gripping the IV drip more tightly when Gwen sighs.

“Trust you to wake up the second he leaves your side,” she says. “Merlin’s downstairs. He went to go get himself some breakfast.”

“Breakfast?” Arthur repeats, confused. He hadn’t actually looked at any clocks or through any windows, but he’d expected it to be sometime late in the evening.

“Yes, it’s 8 in the morning,” Gwen informs him. “You’ve been out for five days. Merlin hasn’t left the hospital once.”

“But he’s alright?” Arthur ascertains.

“About as fine as can be expected. He’s got some bruising, but he’ll make a full recovery. You, on the other hand, won’t if you keep moving around so much. Stay here. I’ll be right back with a wheelchair,” she says as she turns on her heel and disappears. Arthur, for what is likely the first time in his life, listens.

Gwen returns a split second later and helps him sit down, and once he’s finally sitting, he starts to wonder how he hadn’t collapsed while walking through the hall. He feels so _weak_.

Merlin, when Gwen finally wheels him back into his own room, looks lost and frazzled.

“Arthur?” he asks when he sees them. “Oh, thank the gods.” Merlin collapses to his knees right in front of him, and Arthur feels bad for worrying him. “I thought something had happened.”

“I was looking for you,” Arthur replies, moving his hand so that it’s resting on top of Merlin’s on his thigh. “I was worried that you weren’t here,” he adds after a second, feeling a sudden indescribable urge to explain himself.

“I was downstairs, getting breakfast,” Merlin answers, eyes never leaving Arthur’s own.

“I know,” Arthur says. “Gwen told me.” He turns over his hand so that he can interlace his fingers with Merlin’s."Are you alright?" he asks Merlin. Gwen may have said Merlin was fine, but Arthur needs to hear it from Merlin's lips.

"I'm in a better state than you are," Merlin teases and smiles weakly. His eyes have lost the shine Arthur had been working so hard to restore over the last couple of months. He may be fine physically, but mentally, he's far from it. Arthur knows how he must feel. He distantly wonders how many therapy sessions it will take to get over the fact that his own father almost killed him.

He wonders how long it will take Merlin to get past such trauma again.

Arthur isn't sure whether it's the right time to ask about what happened to Uther, but he can't hold himself back from asking. And besides, would any time be a good time?

"Uther," he starts, then trails off, unsure of how to phrase the question he wants to ask. Is he in prison? Has the date of the trial already been announced? Is there any chance Uther will manage to stay out of prison? Because he can't, right? Not with all the evidence they have against him. No matter who he pays off or threatens, he shouldn’t be able to stay out of prison.

He decides that most of these are questions that Merlin doesn't want to hear or will have trouble answering. Instead, he goes with, "What happened to Uther?"

Merlin automatically flinches away from him when he hears the name. He looks down and refuses to meet Arthur's eyes for what seems like the longest few seconds in Arthur's life.

"He won't be troubling anyone any longer," Merlin whispers, firmly keeping his gaze somewhere to the side of Arthur's feet.

"What?" Arthur asks.

"He's dead," Merlin elaborates, and yes, _thank you_ , Arthur managed to figure that much out by himself.

He's not sure how to feel. Part of him is mourning for the man who had raised him, who had taught him to ride a bike and taken him to amusement parks, but a larger is so relieved that if not for the fact that he's already sitting, he would have collapsed.

On the heels of that relief follows embarrassment and guilt. His father just died, and he's barely sad about it. He can almost hear Uther's voice telling him how disappointed he is, that his death deserves at least a modicum of grief and sadness. He feels wretched.

"Arthur," Merlin says. Arthur opens his eyes to look at him again, wondering when he'd even closed them in the first place.

"Alright," Arthur replies. His lips seem very dry all of a sudden, and he smooths his tongue over them in the exact way Morgana had spent half their childhood telling him not to do.

"I killed him," Merlin adds quietly.

 _Oh_ , Arthur wants to say, but doesn't. He can't help but to take comfort in the fact that at least it wasn't him, that he hadn't shot and killed his own father, who, granted, had ruined his life in more ways than one. And Merlin's right, isn't he? At least now, Uther won't be able to hurt anyone.

But Merlin, _Merlin_ seems to look anything _but_ happy, and he's still avoiding Arthur's eyes.

“The second bullet; it went right through the cuff and it cracked. I got myself out, and then you were there, bleeding on the floor, and I couldn’t stop it Arthur, I _tried_ , but he was standing over you and my magic slipped out of my control,” Merlin hurries to explain.

Arthur sighs and reaches out with his free hand, ignoring the spike of pain in his stomach as he tilts Merlin's chin up.

"It was self-defence," he tells him, tightening the grip he has on Merlin's hand. Merlin's lips are red and raw from how much he'd been biting them, and Arthur runs his thumb over them.

"I _know_ ," Merlin replies. "I know, but I can't help but to feel guilty about it. He was your _father_."

"And you're my soulmate," Arthur says. "And it was either him or us. For what it's worth, Merlin, I'm glad you chose us."

Merlin lets out a sob, then moves to bury his head in the crook of Arthur's neck. It doesn't take long before Arthur begins to feel tears seeping into the collar of his nightgown, and he absolutely loathes seeing Merlin cry.

"Hush," Arthur tries to console him, but the only thing that accomplishes is getting Merlin to cry _more_ , and Arthur finds that his own eyesight is starting to become blurry. They stay like that until the position becomes too uncomfortable, and then Merlin helps Arthur move to the bed. He stands at its side, hands fluttering from Arthur's hair, to the bedclothes, and to his own sides. Arthur takes one good look at him, before moving over to the side to make more room on the bed.

"But," Merlin tries to protest, but Arthur doesn't let him.

"We've been through a traumatic experience," he tells Merlin. "I'm sure the nurses won't mind if spend some time lying next to each other for comfort."

Merlin looks at him sceptically, but then his eyes dart to the space at Arthur's side and Arthur can see his resolve slipping and eventually throwing itself off a cliff.

It's when they're both finally on the bed, with Merlin's hand placed right over his heart that Arthur finally feels a sense of peace that's been missing from his life for so long.

"We'll get through this," Merlin whispers into his neck, clutching at Arthur tightly. Arthur turns to kiss the top of his head.

"We will," he agrees. "Together."

~oOo~

Neither he nor Morgana attend Uther's funeral. They don't even bother organising it. Arthur doesn't who does, but he has a sneaking suspicion that Morgana may have asked her PA to look into it.

Arthur's grateful. As much as he hates Uther, he still feels that he owes it to him to at least guarantee him a burial. He and Morgana split the costs of the proceedings, but they do their utmost best to stay away from anything extravagant. No fancy coffins, no luxurious tombstones, no rare flowers. Instead, everything is supposed to be ordinary.

Arthur presumes that there's going to be extensive media coverage of the funeral, just like lately, there has been extensive media coverage of his entire life. He's lost count of how many different newspapers and magazines made their attempt at printing his entire life story.

He tries to keep them away from Merlin the best he can, but the events of the past week are anything anyone seems to be talking about nowadays. Arthur isn't surprised when Merlin virtually locks himself away in the flat to write his book. Nowadays, he and Merlin spend a lot of their free time either in bed or on the couch, watching whatever happens to be on the telly.

Morgana comes to stay with them for a few days, having decided that neither Arthur nor Merlin are in a fit enough state to be taking care of themselves, let alone each other. She even takes time off work, which seems a bit inconceivable to Arthur, but Morgana claims that her PA can handle most things, but if anything important comes up, she's been ordered to call.

Arthur believes her. If Morgana's PA is anything like Morgana herself, then there's nothing to worry about, maybe except for any unfortunate soul who happens to drag in some trouble.

Morgana doesn't really do much to help around the house, other than making them semi-decent home-cooked meals. Arthur finds that he's hungry most of the time (the other half he's nauseous), and he eats whatever Morgana puts in front of him. Merlin, on the other hand, hasn't had much of an appetite over the last few days. He eats something here and there, but they're usually tiny portions, much smaller than what he should be eating.

Morgana drives Arthur to PT, and both him and Merlin to their respective psychologists. After the first three days, Arthur all but orders Morgana to head back to work. She doesn't go easily. In the end, they compromise. Morgana only works half a shift each day, because as the boss of her own company, she can't stand to be away for so long without having the company suffer.

(She claims that she's happy working from home, but Arthur doesn't believe her. Not completely, anyways.)

Morgana stays on their couch. Merlin had, at first, offered up his room, but Morgana had decided that he needed the extra space more than she did. Which was true.

Arthur finally managed to convince Morgana to move back to her flat after a week. He understood that he was her little brother and she was just worried, but he didn't know how much longer he could last with her living under his roof. He loved Morgana, he really did, but sometimes she could be a little bit too much.

Besides, he was mostly fine by then. Physically, anyway.

His therapist had suggested moving somewhere else. Arthur is all for the idea. He's never been incredibly fond of this flat, but now that Uther almost killed him and Merlin in it? He can't wait to be rid of it. He just needs to break the news to Merlin and hope that Merlin agrees with him.

(Merlin does, he learns once he finally gathers up the courage to raise the topic. If anything, Merlin's more eager than Arthur himself to be away from here. They go out to look at potential flats the next day. They want something small for now, something temporary. They can look for a larger flat once they’ve managed to get their lives together. Right now, they both just need to be away from this place.)

The recent attempt on his life also brought about a sort of epiphany. Arthur's been in business for the whole of his adult life, but back when he was still in university, he'd also read politics.

A career change is in order. He wants to go into politics. He wants to make people aware of magic and the good it can bring. He wants to campaign for the rights of all those like Merlin and all those like him. Someone needs to stand up against bigots, and it might as well be him.

He’ll have Merlin’s support, and Morgana’s and Gwen’s. And he really hopes that with that, he’ll be able to change the world for the better.

~oOo~

**_ONE YEAR LATER_ **

"I love it," Merlin exclaims the second the door closes behind them. Arthur smiles, watching as Merlin dances around their new flat. "I love it more now than I did when I first saw it."  
  
"That's because it's ours now." Arthur laughs. When Merlin finally comes back to him, he reaches out his hand to fondly ruffle his hair. To think that only a few months ago, he'd been managing to survive without Merlin. He wouldn't be able to do that anymore. Now, it seemed to Arthur that he needed Merlin just as much as he needed air to breathe.  
  
"Ours," Merlin repeats, than laughs in delight and launches himself into Arthur's arms. "I still can't believe it."  
  
"Me neither," Arthur says, peppering the side of Merlin's face with kisses. Merlin moves his head so that he can catch Arthur's lips in one long, mind-blowing kiss that somehow manages to turn into a full-on make out session up against their new front door. They only break apart when the both of them are too starved for air to be able to see straight.  
  
"Have I ever told you how wonderful you are?" Merlin asks, caressing the side of Arthur's face with one hand, and letting the other rest on Arthur's waist.  
  
"Not recently," Arthur replies. "I wouldn't mind hearing it more often."  
  
"You're so spoilt," Merlin says, smiling at him. It's all upturned lips and dimples, and Arthur hooks his thumbs through Merlin's belt loops and pulls him in for yet another kiss.  
  
Merlin goes willingly, but only stays for a minute.  
  
"Arthur, no," he whines, breaking their kiss and nuzzling into Arthur's jaw. "We're supposed to be moving the furniture in. We'll never be done if we get distracted."  
  
"I don't think I'd mind that much," Arthur says truthfully, trailing his lips along the sensitive shell of Merlin's ear. "Would you?"  
  
"Mmm. Yes. I would very much mind not being able to sleep on an actual mattress at night. I would also mind not having any way to brew coffee in the morning. So unless you want to wake up next to a zombie with back pain for the unforeseeable future--" Arthur opens his mouth to interrupt, but Merlin silences him with a glance, "--then I think you might want to get a move on and start bringing up boxes from the van."  
  
"I'm really starting to wish you had just let me hire a moving company," Arthur says, but he obediently pulls away and turns to open the door. "They would have had all of our stuff here yesterday. _Inside_ , Merlin. We wouldn't have to move all those boxes up so many flights of stairs," he complains.  
  
"There's an elevator, you big baby," Merlin admonishes. "Besides. I wanted this to be something just for the two of us. I didn't really want anyone's help just yet."  
  
"I know," Arthur acquiesces. "But just think of all the sex we could be having if we'd had someone bring up the mattress and the bed and even your bloody espresso machine."  
  
"What's my espresso machine got to do with sex?" Merlin asks, laughing again. He gently prods at Arthur until they're both out the door and standing in the hallway of the building.  
  
"Trust me, you'd need the caffeine for the energy," Arthur answers, shooting Merlin a sultry smile in reply.  
  
"Really?" Merlin says, looking at Arthur doubtfully. "How many rounds of sex did you have in mind?"  
  
"Well," Arthur hums. "Since we'd be having our own little housewarming party, just for the two of us... I was thinking _at least_ one round in each room?" And there were, what? Nine rooms in the flat? Ten, if you included the hallway. They could manage it if they tried hard enough.  
  
Maybe.  
  
Well, they could have, were they a few years younger.  
  
Arthur looks up at the sound of Merlin stifling a laugh. He sighs in mock-disappointment and makes to grab Merlin's hand and pull him in the direction of the elevator.  
  
"How many days did you want our private housewarming party to last?" Merlin eventually asks, all out of breath. His cheeks are adorably flushed, and his hair is in disarray, and all Arthur really wants to do right now is pin Merlin down onto the nearest horizontal surface. Well, if he was forced to, he'd probably manage to settle on a vertical one.  
  
"Until people started missing us," he replies, pressing the button to make the doors close behind them, then finding the one for the ground floor. "Or until we ran out of food. Whichever came first."  
  
"That would be the food, then. All we have is a couple of sandwiches. Didn't really think about shopping for groceries. Didn't really have the time, either. I mean, we've only been the proud owners of this flat for a short while," Merlin says as the elevator starts sinking lower, making Arthur's stomach jolt unpleasantly. He should probably start working out some more, make it easier for him to take the whole ten flights of stairs without having to worry about losing his breath. At least then he wouldn't have to face that terrible sensation a few times a day. Besides, the exercise would probably do him good. It's only, what? Five floors higher up than his old place?  
  
Taking the boxes upstairs takes them hours. By the time they're done and the van is completely empty, both he and Merlin feel sweaty and disgusting. They both do, however, come to the conclusion that it would be better to eat something first.  
  
Arthur finds himself rethinking his earlier stairs-exercise-routine idea.  
  
The sandwiches are good. Suspiciously good, considering that Merlin's the one who made them. Arthur's half-convinced that he had someone help him.  
  
("I didn't," Merlin protests. "I've had some time on my hands, and how better to spend it than by perfecting the art of making sandwiches?"  
  
"I didn't say they were perfect," Arthur teases. "Just edible."  
  
"Oh, fuck off," Merlin replies, throwing a balled up paper bag at Arthur.)  
  
Merlin wants to start unpacking all of their stuff today, and Arthur is left wondering where he gets all his energy from. It's the magic; it must be. There is simply no other way Merlin could still be functioning as well as he is without something giving him the strength.  
  
Then again, Arthur muses, it could just be the joy.  
  
In any case, Arthur agrees to unpack only the bare essentials. Some shower gel, shampoo, their electronics, and some clothes and towels. The other things can just stay in their respectable boxes until they get the furniture in order.  
  
Which reminds him -- they still need to order the furniture for the guest rooms. Merlin wants wicker; Arthur wants something more sturdy. Maybe Merlin would be willing to compromise? Wicker for the balcony, something slightly more old-fashioned in the guest bedrooms?  
  
They have absolutely nothing set up yet. Merlin decided that it would be a good idea to assemble the furniture on their own. Arthur isn't particularly looking forward to the weekend. At least they can call Gwen if they mess up somewhere. She's always been good at that kind of stuff.

  
He’s not particularly looking forward to painting the walls and sleeping in different rooms everyday. He’d told Merlin that they should spend a few more days in the old flat and take some time to set things up here, but Merlin had been so excited that when he’d asked, Arthur was in no state to refuse him anything. Besides, it’s not like inhaling paint fumes would kill them. Probably. Arthur will personally make sure to leave the windows open in each room so that they have the time to air out.  
  
Merlin’s still walking around, digging around in the cardboard boxes containing all of their stuff. It takes him a while, but once Merlin's finally found what they wanted, he urges Arthur up off the floor (Arthur makes a show of getting up as slowly as possible and placing on hand on his own lower back to show Merlin how much it pains him to move from his semi-comfortable place on the floor. Merlin raises one eyebrow at the display, then another when Arthur pouts.)  
  
Arthur would have suggested that they race each other to the shower, but he knows that Merlin would win. He does still have some dignity, thank you very much.  
  
They decide it's more convenient to shower together. After all, the sooner they're clean, the sooner they can go get some rest, right?  
  
It doesn't quite turn out that way, which Arthur really should have expected.  
  
It ends with Arthur on his knees in front of Merlin, swallowing down as much of his length as he can, while Merlin keeps hold of the steel bar in the shower to make sure that he doesn't slip and bash his head open. It ends with Merlin winding the fingers of his free hand through Arthur's hair, panting and moaning and pleading for Arthur to do more, to let him come.  
  
Arthur's hands tighten their grip on Merlin's things, nails biting into the skin and no doubt making pinpricks of pain shoot up Merlin's spine, but that's alright, because Merlin claims he loves it when Arthur does that.  
  
Arthur moves his head back so that only the head of Merlin's cock is still in his mouth, and begins to tongue at the slit, swallowing down every singly drop of precome that leaks out of it.  
  
"Fuck, Arthur," Merlin moans, and then his muscles are tensing and he's coming in Arthur's mouth. Arthur swallows everything down, then makes eye contact with Merlin and licks his lips. Merlin stares at him for a few seconds, wide-eyed and loving, then grips Arthur's upper arms and pulls him up so that he can kiss him. It's Arthur's turn to wind his fingers through Merlin's hair this time, and he moans when he feels Merlin's thigh nudging up against his erection.  
  
"My turn now," Merlin says, pupils blown wide with lust, and when he presses up against Arthur cock again, the pressure perfect, Arthur releases an almost incomprehensible string of _please_ s and _yes_ es and _for fuck's sake, just do it, Merlin_ s.  
  
Merlin lets his lips trail along Arthur's jaw line until he reaches the point where it meets Arthur's neck. He sucks hard, and Arthur's knees buckle under him because _fuck_ that feels good. Merlin peppers kisses all the way down his neck, then his collarbone, and then back up again, but this time, he's stroking Arthur's cock at the same time. Arthur moans, and hangs his head down, nuzzling into Merlin’s neck, and starts making a love-bite of his own on Merlin's pale skin, even going so far as to bite down on the skin to make it redden more.  
  
In retaliation, Merlin sucks harder at that same spot on Arthur's jaw. It's all embarrassingly short after that. Arthur comes in Merlin's hand, with Merlin's name on his tongue, and Merlin smiles against his skin. They let the hot water rush over them, getting rid of any evidence of what had just occurred, and just stand there, holding each other.  
  
"I'm really fucking glad you're my soulmate," Merlin laughs, but it sounds like it's being done through tears. Arthur puts his hand on the side of Merlin's face and tilts it up, and yes, there are, in fact, tears on Merlin's face. He leans down to kiss them away.  
  
"I'm really fucking glad you're mine, too," Arthur replies, kissing Merlin on the lips.  
  
They're going to be alright, he knows. No matter what the future brings, what tragedies or what trials, he and Merlin will face it together, because now that they've found each other, nothing in the universe could possibly tear them apart.

**Author's Note:**

>  **Warnings:** mentions of abuse


End file.
